committed couple and god. churches may perform same-sex marriages, they may not, and that is their right as religious institutions.

>> there are some individuals that say we need to get the government out of the marriage business. there are some people say we only need to recognize civil unions as john mentioned. what i would say there any of those legislators, putt forth a bill that abolishes marriage in the united states and makes everything civil unions. i don't think we're going to have much success during that. i couldn't see democrats or republicans putting forth a bill like that. given the reality we're in, given the reality of marriage in the united states as an institution that excludes gay individuals we're fighting for full marriage equality. host: we go to massachusetts from an independent caller. hi there. caller: i would like to make a statement more than a question. i'm a gay man in massachusetts. i really don't care one way or the other about the words, civil

union or marriage. if civil unions afforded all of the same rights that the word marriage does, i wouldn't care what you call it. but it doesn't work that way. guest: that's correct. as i was just saying, to us it's really a matter of separate but equal. if civil unions were really the way to go and it was the way that the preponderance of hetero sexuals in the united states felt congress going that route, i would encourage them to go that route. that's not the reality we're dealing with. there are things that go beyond the tax code that impact married couples. we're seeing things right now when it comes to transfer of property, hospital visitation. even burial in cemeteries for

spouses of same sex spouses of individual who is served in the military. it's far more a matter of simply calling something by another thing. the laws we have in the united states are exclusionary gay couples. host: jeff dean democrats line, welcome. caller: i have a question. you kind of addressed it before but i'm going to ask it anyway. you say you're a republican. given that you support smaller government, how can you still defend the government being involved in marriage any way at all? i know the practicality that we should fight for gay marriage that we should fight for same-sex marriage. but ultimately, it would seem that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business at all. everybody should be equal under

civil unions. that's what i would think if one really believed in small government and -- i want to make another point, people would talk about the intertwining of abortion and gay marriage. i don't think there's that much relation between the two except for sex. when you think of it abortion for very private kind of issue. for the most part, she tries to forget about it. whereas marriage or any other kind of union is a very public commitment. you're making a commitment in the eyes of god.

whether or not you're making a commitment with the community and the community feeds you that way. host: let's get response from gregory angelo. guest: are you sure you're calling in on the democratic line because your first argument sounded libertarian to me. that is the idea of getting government out of the of the marriage business. yes i can assure that you i am a republican. it's important to make a broader clarification. when republicans talk about being in support of less government, it doesn't mean we're in support of no government. there is a clear distinction people who support less government who are conservatives and people who want no government, those are called airkist. when it comes to less government, the institution of marriage is something that is recognized. it's not something we're looking to abolish. we want to have equal assess to

it that committed hetero sexual couples have. we're playing in the reality that marriage exist and we feel committed same sex couples should be able to engage in civil marriage partnerships. regardless of the associations among social conservatives with abortion and gay marriage. younger conservatives under 30 tend to mirror their parents view under abortion. when it comes to same-sex marriage their breaking with their parents on that. there's a decoupling happening. governor mike huckabee saying if the republican party supports same-sex marriage, evangelicals are going to leave the party in

droves. well, i do not see all the evangelicals turning over to a democratic party that is supportive unlimited abortion without restrictions and completely abandoning the pro-life side of the republican party. which remains incredibly strong. i really think at the end of the day, evangelicals are going to see that same-sex marriage is no threat to their marriages and they have far more to gain by remaining with the republican party and understanding that gay people are god's children just like everyone else. host: you mentioned comment that's former huckabee made and also tony perkins leadings conservative tape. here is rush limbaugh. that conservatives have lost the gay marriage debate. the issue is lost he said. i don't care what the supreme court does, this is inevitable

and it's inevitable because we lost the language on this. limbaugh added that conservatives lost the debate because they allowed the term marriage to be bastardize. what does that mean to you? >> it mean to me they see the writing on the wall in regards to this issue. what's interesting when you talk about rush limbaugh's comments, he's not talking about abandoning the party. he's not talking about civil marriage for committed same sex couples being a threat to america he sees that committed same sex couple have won this argument. bill oriley was talking about messaging. he mentioned that the fact is the only message the opposition has is thumping their bibles. the fact is, yes, we're winning

the messaging war on this and the fact is, you cannot deny that committed same sex couples simply want equal protection when it comes to marriage and they are as loving and committing couples. host: what's your interpretation of where comments like this should be taken? we hear from rush limbaugh and we hear from bill oriley, you're talking about they're not going to leave the party but are they happy about this? guest: there's every solution -- evolution happening across the board among conservatives. conservatives used to be opposed to same-sex marriage. here's why i think this is

happening. in massachusetts in 2004 allowed same sex couples allow to engage in civil marriage partnership, there was a huge pushback from conservatives saying the sky is going to fall. this is going to transform society. churches will be forced to perform same-sex marriages children and nursery schools will be forced learn about gay sexual activity, etcetera. while i didn't agree with that opposition, i can certainly see how people could be fearful of that. here we are now 2013, it's been nearly ten years since massachusetts recognized same sex civil marriages. the sky is not falling. religious institutions have not been forced perform same-sex marriages. people's lives haven't changed. only people lives changed are those same sex couples now able to engage in civil partnerships.

host: chattanooga, republican, go ahead. caller: you mentioned something about morals. if you read the bible through and through from front to cover, you would end up seeing sodom and gamorrah. they are lovers of each other. in a round about way, our morals here in the united states and across the board has demoralized and sooner or later, lord is going to shut the door and he's going to destroy america. if we do not get back on our hands and knees and say lord please forgive us. host: what do you think would happen if the supreme court throws out the defense of marriage act and make other rulings that would open the door

more for gay marriage? caller: actually i'm in law myself and i'm going for my law degree. the way it looks like right now, if morals continue to demoralize and more or less demoralize from the holy scripture then will fall. guest: charlotte i appreciate the question. i don't appreciate the supposition. i i have not read the bible from cover to cover. i read the bible cover to cover many times. when it comes to the story of sodom gomorahh i would encourage to reread that story. the sin of sodom and gomorahh was people not being hospitable to people who they were not

familiar with. because people did not accept strangers and open their doors to those who were seeking their assistance, that's why the lord struck down sodom and gmorah. i encourage you to look at gay individuals, your friends or law school, they're next to you. we're next to you. we are deserving of the same love of jesus christ that anyone else is. host: mary tweets will there be any tea parties in the log cabin any time soon? guest: i'm not sure what you mean by that? we definitely have tea party republican members. i think it's kind of fun to point out that the united statessed for marriage rally that took place this past week on the steps of the supreme court, we were there with flags, don't tread on me rattlesnakes, making that constitutional case

for civil marriage for committed same sex couples. i've been to tea party rallies myself. the interesting thing about going to tea party rally, what is front and center all of them is jobs and the economy. there might be people who disagree with me when it comes to civil marriage, we find that common ground when it comes to low taxes and low spending and out of control government. there are definitely tea party members in log cabin republicans and they are welcome. host: joan an independent caller go ahead. caller: i was curious what you said before for polygamy. is the institution of marriage is about civil right and certainly not about a religious right but a civil right. host: we will move on to tony,

fort worth, texas democratic caller. caller: mr. angelo you're a puzzle to me. you're making a lot of religious -- can you hear me or not? host: we can hear you fine keep talking. caller: you making a lot of religious references but you keep trying to separate it when it come to your own agenda. where do you stand? are you pro-choice? are you pro-life? are you for gun legislation, or you for keeping the things the way they are as far as those go? guest: sure. first of all tony, thanks for the call. let me try to depuzzle some

puzzlement here. speaking personally, i can tell you that i am pro-life. i am prosecond amendment, i'm against further regulations on guns. i agree with a lot of colleagues in the republican party on that front. i agree with members of the republican party who are supportive of civil marriages for same sex couples. when it comes to religion, forgive me if i did seem if it was all over the place. i was trying to make the distinction that you can be a person of faith and also the right of gay individuals to engage in civil marriage partnerships in the eyes of the government. i was pointing out that i am a person of faith and i am a devout christian. i think there's a case just from the religious side, taking major out -- marriage out of the equation that god loves everyone. host: craig from new jersey, go ahead. caller: thanks for your time.

gregory thank you so much for being on today. i appreciate it. are you still there? guest: yes. caller: real quick, you've stated numerous times you've read the bible over and over and then you know as well as i do that in both the old and new testament, it tells us clearly that it is detestable for two men to lie together. it says in the new testament. host: let me ask your opinion. is your opinion on gay marriage based on your religion and your faith? is that what defines your opinion? caller: yes, if i can finish my one sentence. it does say homo sexuals will not enter the kingdom of heaven i don't understand greg's rational that he's a christian.

guest: sure craig, all i can say that is in god's hands. that's for god to determine. i read the bible. the bible has quite a long history in the way that it was -- the books of the bible were assembled. there are chapters in the bible that state that gay men will not be allowed into the kingdom of heaven. i'm paraphrasing here. also that you will earn the ire of the lord if you gate tattoo or if you eat shellfish. i can't get bogged down with a literal fundamental reading of the bible in that regard. what strikes me about the message of the bible is a message of the importance of faith, the power of redemption and grace. the grace of god in assisting us. host: take a step back for us

why you think it's important in this conversation with christianity. i had a quite a few callers bring it up. why does it come up and why is it important in tieing it with this issue? guest: bottom line is, it is the word marriage that people glue up to -- grew up to learn what marriage is. even though you still need to go to your local city hall to get a marriage license. people have obviously very strong opinions about religious faith. i'm really glad for all of these calls today i like pointing out, there's a distinction between a sacrament that occurs in a church and a piece of paper you get from the government. host: one last quick question.

steven wants to know how many women are in the log cabin gop? guest: i don't know off the top of my head. there are quite a number of people who identify as members of the lgbt community who are there. we have a number of women who are board of directors, more women than we ever had on our board of directors. we have straight allies of the log cabin. we welcome everyone. we have women who are members of our chapters around the country and who are chapter leaders on our board of directors. host: gregory angelo executive director of the log cabin republican. thank you for being our guest today. coming up next, america by the number segment, steven is our guest. we'll hear from the economist

ryan avant. they'll seek to debunk of some common economic claims. stay tuned. >> i'm at the dallas city hall. >> november 24th, 1963 jack ruby shot and killed lee harvey oswald. hear firsthand about the ruby trial from juror jay raymond rose who kept a diary of the proceedings. >> i felt sorry for jack ruby. he looked alone.

he just really looked pitiful. he never said anything. never smiled. i made eye-to-eye contact with him. he had a vacant stare i guess you'll say. i felt sorry for him. >> this saturday at 7:15 p.m. eastern. part of america history tv this weekend on c-span 3. >> what do you do about the israeli palestinian. that palestinian say the will be a decent, stable, peaceful,

democratic non-corrupt government. first, that means they got to go. >> elliott abrams give inside view on the israeli-palestinian conflict. "washington journal" continues. >> our america by the number segment this week looks at economic misconceptions and myths. we'll dig into those with our guest steve landefeld p he's director of the bureau economic analysis and also ryan avant with the economist. thank you to you as well. let's start by talking about federal taxes. tax season right now. here are some things that b.e.a. looked at, are federal taxes at a record high? >> yes and no. every number that we come out

with in a growing number will be bigger than the last number. there's always a record. when we look at federal taxes paid it's a record in the since it's $2.7 trillion. when we look at it as a share of the economy, it's 15% in recent years which is a record low. we also have on our chart there, income taxes both federal, state and local as a share of personal income, which is a little bit more than what the average person will be seeing. there are two we see there's been a decline and in recent years, it has been record low as well. quickly should note that a lot of this is due to the recession of course. we always see that kind of fall during the recession. the congressional budgets estimates by 2015 we'll be up to 19% shared gdp. little above the post war average of 18% but still below

the peaks we've seen. >> why is this important? where do people get the perception about how high taxes are? >> it's important because the revenue that we bring in through taxes they're obviously part of the calculation that goes into the budget deficits and the way that we fund the government. to the extent that we're concerned about that, we're concerned about growing debt, it's important to note how we're doing on this measure. i think that people develop their impressions on it not just base on the total amount of money flowing on the treasury coiffures. even though the money -- the checks they're writing are smaller, probably feel more burdensome just given the state of the economy. it is important to note that rates are not historically high the size of the money going into the treasure are not at historically high level. >> if you like to join in conversation, here are the numbers to call.

if you live in the eastern or central time zone ring us up at 202-585-3880 or 202-585-3882. have taxes increased from other sources or levies or things like that? >> certainly over the past year or two, we started to see rates go up and that's largely due to efforts to address the federal government deficit. over the past two or so years, state governments have really trying to close pretty large budget gaps mostly due to the recession. one of the ways they've done that by increasing fees and increasing tax rates as well as cutting on spending on programs. it's not correct for people to feel like they're paying a bit more than they used to. host: let's go to steve

landefeld for this one. is federal spending at a high? guest: we look at a total more than $4 trillion in spending. we are indeed again at a level and as shared gdp about 24%, we are again under a record level. one of the advantages it allows you to decompose it and break down and look at more detailed components. the top line there, the black line, includes what we call transfers. those are referred to as entitlements and it includes social security as well as medicare and medicaid. if we take those out and look at what might consider core government spending on things like federal contractors, buildings military equipment, we see that over time it has fallen from a high as a shared gdp 17% to 8% reaching record lows of little under 6% in recent years in 2000. we also note that a big share of

that decline is accounted for by declining in defense spending as a shared gdp. nondefense spending has been knocking around about 2.5% of gdp throughout that period. i think those are some things people aren't aware of that become apparent when one drills down into the sets of data to look at the composition of what federal spending is. host: when we look at federal defense and nondefense spending, why is there a significant breakouts for you and what do we learn from them? guest: it give us a sense what we're spending our money on and what we're going to need to look at when we're think being cutting or reigning in the budget deficit. everyone would love to cut item that's we don't care much about. foreign aid is a popular one. it doesn't end up being a large share of what the government is spending on. entitlements -- medicare and social security.

defense is also a large component. that's something we're reluctant to sort of cut back on. host: we see this total federal spending including transfer payments. that include entitlements has ryan mentioned. transfer payments might be something people haven't heard of. guest: you're taking money from one group in the u.s. population and giving it to another. it's not part of what we would consider production. host: thank you for explaining that. guest: in the way it's like insurance but it becomes difficult to maintain when you have demographics. that's not really the source of a lot of the growth in spending and some of our budget troubles. host: this question, is federal debt at a record high. steven landefeld. guest: once again, let's compare it to something and we look at it as a share of gdp and

it's about 73%. that's where we are now. it certainly is rising. it's not a record because when we were paying for financing cost of world war ii as you can see there at 108%, we certainly have been higher. one way to kind of think about that put it in personal terms, if the couple, married couple with median income today went out and bought a median priced house and put 20% down, then their mortgage will be about 250% of their income. that may help people think about it because it's relative numbers. another way to look at it is it relative to total u.s. assets which are very big. it turns out that total debt held by the public in 2011 as we note on the chart there, was 5.2% of total u.s. assets. which kind of a bad way to look at your debt. host: how can we compare what

the spending was like back in world war ii versus spending now? what do you make ryan avent of the course we're seeing here, the dips and the increase? guest: the world war ii was nothing like what we're observing like. i think it's comforting in a way and it's also a very different world at that point. i do take a little bit of comfort towards the end though. we got up to sort of kind of a local peak there in the early 1990s. that was a time where there was a lot of worry and lot of interest rates. that was the time we got an agreement in congress to raise tax rates and cut the growth in spending and that led to budget surpluses. it shows that when interest rates are pushing us to get our act together, we can do it. host: ryan avent is economic correspondent at the economist. also chief author of free

exchange. other guests is steve landefeld bureau of economic analysis and director. let's go to our first phone call. howard is calling from kentucky. how howard. caller: thank you for taking my call. host: go ahead. caller: well, first of all, i'm glad to pay taxes in this wonderful country. it's very few countries you can travel east, west, north and side with highways and that cost money. i don't mind paying taxes. i do have something to say or to worry about how our tax dollars are spent generally across the board. it seems like the people that manage our money, whether they be democrats or republicans, are very inept in management. i don't know what the answer to

the problem is. we've got some economist on there this morning talking about it and there's things that bother me to some extent that i don't think our political leaders take into consideration. when you see advertising on television or information on tv concerning -- for instance, i know our president has to take vacations, there was an immense amount of publicity about the first lady and the cost of her vacations and she's taken since our president has been in office. as indicated i'm an independent so i vote my conscious every time. i don't think it puts a very

good face on our politicians when this kind of expenditures, as far as the vacations, are taken. i don't think that puts a very good face on our management. host: howard, would like to decide where your tax dollars go? would you like to see some forms that the i.r.s. give you where you could allocate where your taxes go and how they are spent? caller: no because that's above my pay grade. i would like to think the people we put there are more competent in their decision-making. host: let's get a response from ryan avent. guest: as far as i know, the first lady spending on vacations is not extravagant by historic levelsly. when we look at what congress done over the last couple years, it's not

confidence inspiring. we had shut downs after shut downs. i think that there are a couple things to consider. one is that when you look at the growth in the nation's fiscal trouble to the extent that we have fiscal trouble, it's not necessarily who is the mismanagement. it is mostly due to national demographic change and distribution of things we spend our money on. it's also a fixable problem. we can give voters more confidence if we improve the budgeting process and got away from the sort of sequester standoff, fiscal cliff standoff. there's a receipt, when you file your tax return, the government sends our receipt, essentially this is where your money went, to defense, security, to infrastructure and investment and things like that. it would be useful for people to have more of the sense what the

government is was spending the money on. host: greenville, massachusetts, welcome. hi stewart. caller: i do think that flat tax would definitely work for this country. it's funny how corporations and the poor are both fighting for welfare from our government and they both seem to be getting it. i would like to see a flat tax for corporations as well as the general population. i don't like all of these loopholes and we building nations. i don't think it's our job to rebuild nations all around the world. china would loan our country money all at high interest rates. they are laughing at us. that's a little disturbing in america. we're too involved in other countries and rebuilding them and our bridges are falling down. china is loaning us money to police the will. that country has been around for

centuries. the new kid on the block, they probably laughing at us. host: thanks stewart. let's look at this graphic. do foreigners own america since our caller brought up china. we can see here who essentially owns america and that assets all owned by all foreigners. tell us more steve landefeld. guest: one of the things we do at the bureau of economic analysis, we put out reports on this topic and as you can see from these charts on the left hand very tall bar, foreigners own $25 trillion in assets in the u.s. while the u.s. owns the next bar, $21 trillion in assets abroad. on that, they own $4 trillion more of us than we of them. once again, you got to put that into a perspective. we look at it relative to u.s. net worth. the u.s. has net worth of

$60 trillion. so they have a little less than 6% of total u.s. net worth. over to the right, we've broken it out because we broke out china. again they own $1.6 trillion in net assets here in the u.s. or about 2.3% of u.s. net worth. host: we see what the u.s. owns in china. the assets own in china and that net what that net is that steve landefeld just mentioned. we hear callers bring you the question of u.s.-china relationship. why are these numbers significant? guest: from the perspective they provide the share they own. i think there are other things to think about. one is that the fact that china has purchased a lot of our debt, gives them a direct interest in our economy. it's in their interest for the

american economy to go stronger. it's worth pointing out over the last few years, the sort of share of borrowing that we've done from china has declined. there's more internal borrowing and financing. i think there's not the level of dependents on the chinese economy than lot of people assume just based on sort of figure we see run into the trillions. host: ann in dayton, ohio, good morning. caller: thanks. i agree partially with the guy from kentucky and the immediate previous caller. i don't mind paying for taxes at all. i want to pay my fair share and due. if they can talk about the history of taxes. the younger fella said something about world war ii being different times. i believe in world war i and world war ii, taxes were raised to pay for

those wars. of course, you can never pay for people's lives in my way. but the actual physical economic cost on tax -- talk about taxes being raised during world war i and world war ii. during bush with iraq, taxes were raised. the defense, the iraq war cost are not included in our defense spending and they learned how to separate it to fool the american public. if you can talk about that separation and why taxes weren't raise during iraq. also capital gain taxes, why capital gain people when they're only paying 50% and average american citizen is paying 35%. host: we'll start with steve landefeld. guest: just a couple thoughts here. as you can see from this first

chart we put up which was the one that personal income taxes is a share of personal income. there was some rise. you are correct. i think if memory serves me correctly, if you go back to that world war ii, despite that large debt for a number of circumstances, that's been described as the golden era of economic growth. we grew our way out of the debt. the growth in the economy produced lot of extra receipts. in terms of the level of defense spending, i can at least assure you we get data from the department of defense and expenditures overseas and in the united states are included in those statistics, i can't speak to direct and indirect defense spending but at least those numbers on actual spending are

in there. host: ryan ahaven't. guest: steve is right economic growth is important. but the caller is right in that immediately after world war ii, the top marginal income tax rate was 90%, which was quite remarkable. certainly nothing we could see these days. i guess taking the point on capital gains the caller mentioned, that's certainly strikes some people unfair. the economic argument is that capital gains result in investment and that in general we don't want to discourage investment because investment is one of the key ingredients to future growth. if you tax capital gains more heavily now, you get less growth and less revenue in the future. that doesn't mean you should set aside about issues like fairness. host: steve, virginia, welcome. caller: we used to have something called an alternative maximum tax but it is called

something different. it was called slavery which is 100% what you earned went to somebody else. what we need to do is establish, i don't care what the rate is, establish an alternative maximum tax and have each product have the total taxation that is on that product at the wholesale level. then you could add the retail tax and state taxes and let them have all the state, federal and local taxes totaled up on a receipt of every product instead of the ingredients. i'm not worried about the ingredients but more interested in how much taxation occurring on the product i'm buying. conversely, you would agree world war i is over. host: your point of that steve? caller: we still have withholding tax. it would be better to pick the

five banks closest to your polling place and deposit your withholding taxes in that bank and have sort of a christmas account. on october 15th, you would write a check to the federal, state and local government and on the first week of november, you could then go and vote. host: ryan avent weigh in on that proposal. guest: certainly interesting proposal there is. the first proposal the caller mentioned, when you buy something you can have a look there on the box and see how much taxes is mart of that -- part of that price. that's something you observe in europe. that means each day in the processing for a consumer good, it's taxed a little bit and at the end of the day, on the receipt there, get the share of tax in that price.

those sorts of things increase awareness of what the taxes are and when you pay them is certainly something that would be beneficial here in the u.s. host: steve landefeld any comments. guest: no not on that comment. host: we're joined by ryan avent with the economist. barry is our next caller from teaneck, new jersey. caller: thought for taking my call. number one is there a good source of publication that breaks down federal taxes -- federal revenues and expenditures on a multiyear basis? second, i've always heard partly on fox that the top one percent or two percent pay an enormous amount of income taxes.

i was wondering if that includes the payroll taxes. if you have a break down of federal taxes both income and payroll taxes by levels. host: before we get an answer on that. why are those numbers important to you? caller: it's just a matter of fairness. i will tell you when i was in college in the 1960s, we were told that we had a progressive tax system. now we seem to hear a different vocabulary. we couldn't talk about wealth transfers and transfers of wealth. i don't know what crept into the system.

in terms of fairness. one other thing i would mention when you talk about the value added tax, i listened to a number of economic people and they'll talk about the need for lowering our corporate taxes. i went out on the web and compared our corporate taxes with other nations, europe and asia. i saw that our rate is higher. host: you given us a lot of thoughts and lot of questions. let's start with ryan avent. guest: i think the caller is correct. we don't have just one tax system. we have an income tax system. that seems to be progressive. on top of that we have other taxes we have state income tax, we have the payroll tax which

what we would call a regressive tax. which is a share paid by lower income earners than for workers with higher income levels. when you add all of those things together, the tax system is mostly progressive. wealthier people do tend to pay a larger share of their income. it's not nearly progressive as a lot of people assume. these are things that will fall more heavily on low income earners than on high income earners. high income earners are taking advantage of tax loopholes. it's progressive and mildly so. host: mr. landefeld, he was asking for resources where to find information about the federal government's revenue and also expenditures. guest: you can go to dea.gov. you can find data on questions he asked about a break down of

federal spending by type including transfers, medicaid and medicare all the way back to 1929 in that data set. what we don't have so much of second part of his question is distribution information. i recommend the congressional budget office which is the source to combine household data to give answer about those questions. i might say that is something we're working hard on because it's becoming increasingly important. different groups having different margin of propensity to consume makes a lot of difference who gets the increased income. host: steve landefeld is director of the dea, the bureau of economic analysis. agency within the commerce department responsible for the national, international regional and industry accounts. that includes such estimateses a gdp, personal income, personal

profits and it goes on from there. let's talk about wages. where american wages are at. what trends are we seeing and are there any surprises mr. landefeld? guest: it's a little bit more surprise for most households in the way they think about their income. in this chart here, many have the perception that the -- we look over time in the charts we have here which cover from 2000 to 2007 period, 2007 to 2009 recession and then the recovery 2009 through 2011. that blue bar is real compensation per working. we see all of those bars even in the recession those wages per worker were increasing. in particular if you focus on that 2007-2009 period, from the viewpoint of wages and salary,

you see that very small 0.1, those were hardly growing at all. what was growing quite a bit during that period is that red bar, which is your supplements. this is what your employer puts in for your pension plan and medical plan. those are the things that the average household see. there's a little bit different picture out there. if they look at their full compensation package, every individual's situation is different. these are national statistics and averages. host: ryan avent, public perception versus some of these numbers we've seen? guest: public perception is that wages haven't become rising as strongly and total pay hasn't been rising as strongly as it has in the past. when you get compensation in benefit form and a lot of that is healthcare. you're not necessarily experiencing better healthcare

outcomes. we're not experiencing major life expectancy gains. you feel like that's new conversation but we're running in place. i think that's one of the big sources of misperception. host: ryan avent economic correspondent at the economist. let's look at personal income and mr. landefeld what you're seeing what personal income look like. this is hot off the press. guest: exactly what we're seeing you can tell from that chart, we've had quite and unusual period here. we were going on sort of relatively modest growth rates we're seeing there. host: started in february of last year and now we're seeing latest numbers from last month. guest: month to month changes. they aggregate up to a fair amount. as you can see the bars on the right get rather large. what we're seeing there is we

saw quite an acceleration of bonus payments and other forms of compensation in the fourth quarter, november and december of last year in anticipation of changes in tax rates in particular increases in top rates. you have at the love that income being pushed forward. you have dividends payments going out. we got that big ramp up particular in december. of course, you fell off that in january. that was just off that rebound. we see that large decrease there. then we're seeing another large increase -- if we look at the levels, we're about back to where we were in november. you have this rearrangement of income as result of anticipated taxes that is working its way out of the system. i should also note that consumer spending growth over the last

year from this report in february grew 2% and over the last year, real disposal income grew about 1%. host: ryan avent you see these numbers that just calm out this morning -- came out this morning. what are you learning from them? guest: at the same time, when you look at this and combine the information on spending that steve just talked about and also information from other sources on wage gains in recent months, it looks to me like we are seeing some real firming in the labor markets that's translating into pay increases. it's been hard five or six years for most americans. we're finally getting back to some substantial and meaningful wage gains. host: sylvia on the line from broken arrow, california. guest: praise the lord, how you doing? i have two questions.

one for ryan avent and the other one for steve. the first question that i have is for ryan. it's a blessing that you have a blessed job that you're doing. i like you to take into consideration that my daddy, he was in the korean war. he was drafted in and now my first born military son, he's been in three wars. i want to know why so many heavy duty cuts? he's got my three grand babies up there at that base. i just want to know, what do you think about the economic situation pertaining to the v.a. and then why would anyone -- why would you think, i've heard the other callers and other men and seem like they are veterans -- why would anyone say that you're not fighting a war in their mind

since fighting in world war i, ii and now the korean war and other afghanistan war. what the situation is going on now. i like to understand about that. host: sylvia hold on a second. you want to larry from him about defense spending? caller: yes. the other question is that i hope and pray that you take another economic look at the values of cutting v.a. benefits, social security benefits. like to see some charts on that. i didn't see no charts. i seen all the charts pertaining to personal income and housing and the taxes. host: i'm going to move on since we're running tight on time. i'm taking a note of that as well and we'll go to steve landefeld first. guest: that data is available. it's up to others to evaluate.

at the same website, daa.gov. those are important. people who are trying to value programs and they change over time. host: ryan avent talking about defense? guest: we certainly appreciate your family member's service. the country has to think about what's an appropriate amount of money to spend on defense given security threats around the world. i think it is important once we start talking about reigning budget to make sure we're not cutting important services for soldiers who have come back from the war who need retirement benefits, v.a. benefits. that's where we're seeing the budget falling. i think that's a real problem. you have a good point there. host: john from michigan, hi there. caller: good morning. c-span and steve landefeld. thank you for your intelligence.

as far as taxes go, listening to people i know they tell me back in depression, they went after the wealthy people because they had the money. they gave them two options, you either pay the taxes or create jobs. not just one or two jobs but a lot of jobs. we need to look after that. as far as wages, anybody in their right mind today think $7 or $10 an hour can raise a family and pay these gasoline prices, which is here in michigan is like 15% more than the southern states which is questionable. i've waited on the phone but no big deal. host: do you mind we look at the chart. it touches on what you're talking about the workers share of the national income, how workers income compares with others. can you touch on that

steve landefeld? guest: there's been a lot of discussion about how much the national income goes to workers through their compensation and how much is going through investors in the since of business type income. while there certainly has been a decline over time as you can see, the long view of it is you can see from both of those lines, top one being labor share and bottom one being capital share, we haven't had a lot of dramatic movement in either. as a matter of fact, as we look at that period, we will end up at the same point as we were before on those lines. lot of discussion indeed. some of it according to studies by the congressional budget office. i don't think when we look at the long view, this is one of

the major movers we see with respect to what's happening to workers income. host: briefly ryan, can you reflect on these numbers? guest: i would just say these numbers and the shift we've seen in the conversation have a lot to do with the broad economy. the answer those changes aren't simple in terms of technological change and changes in the global economy. it's completely right to have investors and workers and infrastructure here in the u.s. i don't think if we have an easy answer to this particular challenge. host: ryan avent he's economic correspondent at economist you can find that at the economist website. other guests is steve landefeld director of the bureau economic analysis. thank you to both of you. that's all for "washington journal" this morning. thanks to you for tuning in. we'll be back tomorrow morning at 7:00 eastern time. enjoy your day.

>> here's a look at what's ahead today here on c-span. coming up next look at the intersection so called infotainment program. former cnn and abc news anchor aaron brown. at 2:00, we'll go live to miami for remarks from president obama on the economy. that will be followed by a recent health science committee here on threats from outer

space in light of the meteor explosion in russia. tonight we'll have a bipartisan policy center commission on political reform including former senators and governors. here's a quick review. >> when you want to solve problems, facing your constituents in the country, it's miserable. that's the bottom line. i'm a fighter by nature. my spot inside is my greek heritage. unfortunately, the process has changed in the united states senate. it's no longer reconciling differences. either side as a position and generally it's reflected at a potty position. once that fail, neither side has a vote, they don't move to try to resolve those differences.

they become irreconcilable. the question is how do you get pass those differences. that's the fundamental problem that's occurred in the united states senate. you have more and more new lawmakers in both the house and senate. then you have the 2014 election could be over 50%. so many who have not part of the legislative not been familiar how to make a law. it's true, we don't have amendment process, we don't have a committee process. everything has broken down. i came to the sad conclusions the site needs to be taken on the outside. that's why this is so appropriate to engage the public to demand change and reward those who are willing to engage in consensus building in

compromise and penalize those who don't. >> that discussion happened earlier this month at the ronald reagan library in california. we'll have the entire program for you tonight starting at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. monday night on first lady, anna harrison who's husband william harrison died after a month in office. juliet tyler becomes the president's second wife. >> julia loved publicity. she poses a model. she was known as the rose of long island. by all accounts was bewitching. bewitched 70-year-old john tyler

who married her. she loved being first leader. she helped john for the rest of the year. but it was julia tyler who ordered the marine band to play hail to the chief. it was julia tyler who greeted her guests sitting on a throne on a raised platform with purple plumes in her hair. >> we'll include your questions and comments about these three first ladies by phone, facebook and twitter, monday night live at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c-span 3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> with more and more political news, choices and service and more personalities driving that political news, we thought we spend some time this evening here on c-span talking about the intersection of what's been

called infotainment. we'll also hear from jane hall and patrick gavin. we'll also open up facebook. we did it earlier today and posted a question for you. lots of comments so far. what are your thoughts on the connection between infotainment and political journalism. where are you getting your political news. lots of comments so far. here's one from nate watkins who says that fox msnbc are nearly wall to wall entertainment that don't attempt to be journalistic at the prime time slots. patricia said she likes colbert

and stewart better. msnbc fired phil donahue because he did not back the iraq war. we're also looking at twitter in the hash tag we're using this evening is infotainment. all of that is coming up in about an hour and 15 minutes. we will open up your comments and questions from jane hall. next up we take you to los angeles and to these zoklov public affairs. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> my favorite moderator, mr.

john matthews. >> thanks so much for being here. thanks to my colleagues at zoklo. this is terrific panel of three incredible journalist with incredibly different backgrounds. let's get into it. the first time i was told i would model this panel, it was great physical pain. it was in 2003 outside of the county building in norwalk where candidates must go to file papers when they run for office. the recall election has been scheduled and people were going to run for governor. i was there staking it out covering for the l.a. times when

arnold schwarzenegger walked up the stairs to file papers. i was sitting from a distance trying to get a question and arnold was ignoring. the next thing i knew, my head hit the ground and i had been mowed over from reporting crews from access holiday from inside edition. they wondered right up to arnold and got answers to questions and were unhurt by security. i must say once i determined that i did not need medical attention, i had to question my mind, should i be angry at these people who hadn't managed to

follow journalistic dequorum or should i learn something from them? that's kind of the question of tonight. the entertainment culture is what it is. it's here even if you're just standing there, can knock you over. if you're a journalist, the question becomes how do we get the journalism we need to particularly around politics and government and demand democracy in our country. how do we get that in that culture? how do journalist manage that culture, can you fight it or use it to your advantage? i'll introduce each of the panelist as we get into this. first i will start with charles

lattibute. prior to tmz, he spent eight years at extra. produced nearly 2500 episodes there. before "extra," he worked for phoenix. he produced the nightly 10: 00 newscast. we he went to a.s.u. you've been blamed for the decline of civilization. i want to give you the opportunity to turn the tables a little bit. >> when you see political networks do political coverage, how do you look at those stories? are there things you know from the work you done at tmz that

makes you think this can be done better or that can be done better? >> okay. i'm going to take down civilization now. tmz just dabbles in politics at this point. i don't think what we do -- what we do is part of the menu at this point. the way people need to learn about politicians. what we're trying to do is make politicians personalities. we're trying to get people interested in when we do politics, it's more i guess we'd say on the surface. we're not talking about policy, we're not talking about how this senator voted on a particular bill. we're just talking more about the personality of that person. i do think that there become a new interest now in finding out about these people. not just as politicians. you can draw people in to learn

about the policy if you tell them a little bit about the person aside from politics. some of our most political stories -- for instance aaron shock, we have a photo of him showing his abs. >> congressman from illinois? >> yes, representative shot. the interest he got when we put that photo up. suddenly he had constituents reaching out to him. they didn't even know that he was their representative. they were like wait a second. you now what, it's funny because it is like wow, it took a photo of the guy abs. you can say that's sad and personally i do think it's a little sad but people should be

interested anyway. if that's what it takes to get them in the church, that's what it takes. now aaron shot have people and his constituents are paying attention to how he votes on thing whether they like it or dislike it. it's something he's got deal with. at least now they're interested and they know who aaron shot is. >> i want to push you a little more maybe to give us a little window on how it's made at tmz. you have often been praised. we had an essay from the zocalo who argues that tmz, you can talk about the subject matter, but as a news organization, it's a lot more vigilant than a lot of major news organizations. it's got sort of machine of reporting, reporting disciplines of phone calls and lot of the sort of checks that other places don't do. is that true?

>> basic journalism? >> yes. >> i'm not trying -- it's like people say that a lot and i go, how do you guys get all of those stories? there's no magic formula other than like you said, making phone calls. three dozen phone calls. whatever it is. we have conversations about people hanging up on you. you kind of get used to that if you're doing actual reporting, you get used to people hanging up on you. that's the only way you will find -- when they hang up, you got to say all right, now who do i call. you call the next person and the next person. we always tell new employee, we have p .a.s who want to become producers at tmz, we say how many phone calls did you make. well i called this person. they said they will give me a call back. okay, what are you doing? why are you waiting for a them to call you back?

you will lose the story to the other person who's actually making the phone call. there's always more than one way to skin a cat. don't wait. our thing is make as many phone calls as it takes and in a short period of time, time is necessary, and get the information when you have it. when we have confirmed it with multiple sources then we publish it. you can't wait but that's the new environment of journalism, you wait you lose. >> you've won enemies, awards, anchor of abc world news now. before that had a long career in

television in seattle. in this -- i'm curious what you think. this moment where people get their information, their more likely -- if you're covering a campaign, you're more likely to see a candidate on an entertainment show and in front of you. asking and answering detailed questions and an open interview about policy. popular websites about pop culture as much as news drive political coverage. how could journalist negotiate this? if you trying to bring news about government, politics had this world. do you want to play these games? do you want to be on social media? do you want to be embedded in

these? >> i was struck by the -- cnn did the same thing. they took a picture of me without my shirt on. who knew. >> got that photo right here. >> you didn't have it first. there were a bunch of questions. first of all, these guys didn't invent that kind of television or that kind of information. whatever -- celebrity stuff, it's been around forever. they just do it in a different way on a different medium and at a different level. i don't find it particularly threatening to journalism at all. in fact, if you listen to what

he said, we make lots of calls, we check it out and we verify it and we publish it. that's pretty much what journalism is about. that's pretty much what it is. they do it on a guy with really good abs. but it's just journalism. if arnold schwarzenegger haven't been an actor and a hollywood guy, you would have had that story all by your lonesome. i'm sure the mayoral candidates felt quite lonesome here last week. he's a celebrity. i don't feel the business has changed. i don't think journalism has changed. what we all need to do is stop hammering quite so much. just get back to our own

individual business. he's interested in his story. i'm not interested in chasing his story. i'm glad he's not chasing my stories, because they have a discipline about the way they work that would be scary to me. i want to make sure my guys are applying the same discipline to the stories that we're chasing that his folks are applying to the story that's they're casing. >> do you have any worry? i'm under pressure to be on facebook and tweet. that takes time away. >> it somehow didn't get in nate silver way. mark noeler maybe the most prolific tweeter on the face of the planet. he's also the most formidable white house correspondents there is. if you're looking for a reason

to bitch and moan, honestly it's 140 characters, let's become serious here. your question was about 940 characters so it can't be that hard. >> fair enough. >> no offense. >> none taken. >> tell me, what about the pressure to be entertaining? >> i wouldn't know. >> your own network seems to be under incredible pressure. >> most recently, look -- >> how do they do it? >> they don't do it. how they do it -- i guess they figured out they can cover cruise ships for a really long

time. equate a bad vacation with a natural disaster. what's happened in cable is that fox and msnbc, whatever you may think of it, are more entertaining. cnn always been cnn. it has always been the kind of public utility of news. you want to know what's going on. you fill your pail with news. it fills up and that's enough of that and then you turn it off and you want to go and be entertained. you have a little mud wrestling. oriley is telling someone to shut up. in the old days, olberman was just going on and on. whatever it was, that is more entertaining. what cnn, yet again trying to figure out, i clearly failed at

it. it's a very hard thing to do, is to figure out how to make the day when the natural disaster doesn't hit the data, the planes don't hit the tower, the day the war doesn't start, to make those days as engaging as every other day. you may be that you can't do that because it's not. on those days, you better hope that anna nicole smith died. >> on that note. we need to turn to the "new york times." michael corporate covering the "new york times." he spent nine years as a film and tv producer, production executive and lot of different projects. got into this covering

entertainment since the "washington journal." he has degrees in european intellectual history. which i assume you need to talk about anybody at c.a.a. michael, there was a former movie executive interviewed by pbs in 2001 who said the great line in movie business and one that you'll hear all the time is the material is everything. the material actually nothing, okay. the material doesn't matter. you can show up with the greatest script on earth and prop it down in front of a studio executive and they can come back with the greatest reasons on earth to not become involved with it. it's heavily driven by star power. that is true. the question is, do you see that change happening in the journalistic world? >> i like to think so.

one really different zone here. i'm coming out of deep print. you're coming out of broadcast and we're meeting somewhere in the middle on the internet. these are radically different equations. i want to back up, there's a little bit of false dichotomy here. we're talking about infotainment and how that might be changing things. we're pointing at tmz, oddly enough, tmz, i would say it's one of the most intensely classical repertorial organizations i ever seen occur in this town. you have to look underneath the skin of the subject matter because the subject matter can distract you and realize you may or may not be interested in that. but within this small contained universe, i looked up close and i'm fascinated at how you work the courts, you work law enforcement, you get it right.

you do all the things that when we were better staffed on present publications we used to do. print publications are broad. they cover enormous range of things. staffs are coming down. we no longer have that intensity of focus where you guys are ganged up on a small area and you report the hell out of it and it's amazing thing. putting that aside, to your question, you saying is that lack of importance of the material sort of taking control of journalism? yes. what i see happening, let's just say internallally lally -- internally on our paper. i don't want to stop and say whether the political coverage is good, better and different. that's a different equation and it's really hard unless you study it and read it meticulously everyday to make a

judgment about it. if i look at the way we handle entertainment on the "new york timeses" particularly on the web, there's now a vast amount of material posted and some times printed that just doesn't matter. it's absolutely vacant stuff. if you driven through the south and look at miles and miles of cudzu website and that paper. those are still kind of habit. we're old-timers and it's the only way we know how to do it. trying to kind of drill in and do a couple basic things like tell something they don't already know which is getting to be the rarest elements much of what's printed is a regurgitation of what's known. it's my attitude towards what's known and getting that first

impression is rarer and rarer inside of print stories. telling people something that matters. you can go up and down. we have web producers who evolved over the last four or five years into their hired as people who used to post my stories, now they basically go out and they'll do a q&a with any celebrity who draws traffic on their own. that cudzu pushes the story that might take us a week to crack the head of somebody that doesn't want you to tell it. the celebrity junk is basically crabbing it out. it's taking time, it's taking space and energy. it's fundamentally, all traffic

driven. the more frequently you mention a celebrity name, the higher your traffic will go. if you want a lot of traffic, you've got to keep a constant flow of those things. it doesn't matter much if other people have done it or said it. >> i don't disagree with that. tell a little story that's in your world you'll disown it. you should. the single worse day i ever had on television. the actor robert blake was arrested. he's arrested up in san fernando valley for popping his wife. the actor, robert blake, who has done one very good performance and a tv series, is arrested for

killing his wife. we spent four hours on it. not like a figurative four hours. we looked for no reason that i can figure out. how do you think the story will impact his career? he has no career. >> i think i was gone by then. i don't remember. so, four hours. so i go home and my wife who was a reporter looks at me half asleep and says, why? honest to god, i don't need this right now. i don't need it. the next day i come to work,

there are 15,000 e-mails on an average day we get about 4000 e-mails. i looked through a few hundred. not one said, dammit, you promised you will get into serious news. not once, you didn't do enough robert blake. i write this thing about how we try and this is a mistake and we shouldn't do this and blah blah blah and my boss is going crazy. you guys got to decide too, that program took the biggest number we have done since pan-am crashed in queens and we thought it was terrorism. ten years ago celebrity drove ratings, 20 years from now celebrity will drive ratings. whatever a celebrity was 100 years ago, it will drive ratings on the wall.

i just don't think it's new. >> it has gotten more painful. i see very easy way in newspaper and web terms to think about how bizarre this has become. like the oscars, 10 or 12 years ago, we wrote about the oscars two times in the course of a year. you have the nominations and this it happened. that was about what that enterprise was worth. starting in about the year 2000, i believe i was personally responsible for a terrible corruption in this process. i was working at that time as west coast editorial director, the bureau chief of inside.com. which we set up $35,000 in the first dot-com bust. it was first inexperience in web news. we did all media coverage and we paid everybody too much.

but the only thing that made money on inside.com was something that i and a couple characters there, which we called the oscar tracker. we figured out as a lark, we will get someone to do a mathematical model and add up all the factors, color of hair, nominations, create a model that you could then feed information into and every single day for five months, rank all the contenders. i showed this to my boss, he said that's interesting but i have one suggestion. he said take it down to a decimal place. that would really fascinate people. for five months straight, we posted a ranking of horse race who's getting his. we instantly sold the entire page for the run to the auto

company. everyday for 120 days, he to write a handicap that went with this. entire year, i was doing as many as three appearances a day on your cable news show. to go forward -- >> i knew i knew you were from somewhere. >> five months of the year now. there's traffic around. >> my question would be, if they found something that worked, why didn't someone apply that to the rest of the operation? they found the working formula because basically what you're seeing is a lot of what we do in the scary part is when you -- >> so what's being carved out? >> any story that takes real investment. when you read the paper everyday, there are lots and

lots of intelligent sounding stories that are in that paper. if you know them from the inside and you've done them for 20 and 30 and 35 years, you do know that there's a styrofoam quality to many of the stories. they're being done in a day what used to take a week. classical example is, i'm not a great believer that every story has to be great. every story has to be valid, it has to do something. back in the mid-1980s when nobody this town, everybody in hollywood talked about michael lobitz how he was hideous and he was running the entertainment business and corrupt and evil. there had never been one single newspaper story about him. none. he prided himself on doing this all in the dark. sitting on the "washington

journal," i thought, screw that. we'll figure out a way to put him on the front page of the "washington journal." i peeled off and took two months and i just dogged that man everywhere. when he would come down the stairs at the carlisle hotel in new york, i would be sitting in the jockey club with david brown talking about him, interviewing about him. two months, solid just nothing but piecing together who the hell is this guy that nobody heard. ultimately we ran it on the front page of the journal. it triggered this entire reversal on his behavior. he decided he couldn't hide anymore and went public. many stories, vanity fair came after that. >> by the same token, aren't there ways to exploit it? my own experience, arnold schwarzenegger becoming governor was a gift from god.

people read our stories. i got stories into the l.a. times about really hard topics. workers compensation, local government finance, taxes for business. i even wrote a book about the initiative process. i was able to do that because i dressed them up with story about schwarzenegger. he was the way into that. >> he was already a movie star. not all of them, a lot of people who are in congress who are in the senate, they are very interesting people. if you can get to that and you can peel back a couple other layers, you may find out there are some interest. they're not movie stars. seeing one of your representatives playing basketball and find out that you

got a great jump shot and he does this every tuesday night, might be interesting to some people. >> do you have an agenda? >> no. like i said, we're not going to delve deeper into what -- sometimes we do talk about some politics. more, like i said, we trying to make these people, politicians be personality. learn something about the personality. you might be interested this them and maybe next time you hear on cnn or on fox news channel you hear someone say, marco rubio voted this, that's that guy i saw on tmz talking about how he's totally into hip hop. he talked for five minutes about why lil wayne is not the tupac.

we had this conversation with him. at the end of the conversation, there's a part of me that felt badly we didn't delve deeper into his politics and what he's voting on. that wasn't the conversation. ultimately, it's probably more interesting. i really wanted to hammer him about reaching for water in the middle of the response to the state of the union. we actually had a fun conversation with this guy. i thought, may be people will be interested in what marco rubio politics is now. we're opening it up and we will hand it off to people who will delve deeper into the politics. i think there's a huge appetite for that. i do what we do, we can create more of an appetite to learn about politics. right now now a lot of people are turned off by politics. why not make them more interesting and may be people will pay attention what they're voting or or what they're

screwing up in d.c. >> here's a question. i covered this area chemical belts of baltimore and plants kept blowing up. i remember asking a chemical engineer why this kept asking. he said the problem is what's killing is not what we don't it's what we know that isn't so. when you look at the polling of american public, they know a lot of things that aren't so. they think they know how the government works and the politics works and they actually don't. i guess to the question of sort of obligation. are we crowding out stuff that we better informing them. should we be using the celebrity -- >> in a strange way, i think that actually that's the upside

of everything you're talking about. may be a lot of people have it wrong. i'm not a great believer in the church of journalism. i known too many journalist watch too many people behave in a bad way. it was john stewart who many years ago said our only hope is to have maximum freedom and maximum outlets and may be if we're lucky on a sunny day, the truth will kind of take shape among all of it. i think this huge multiplicity outlet, god bless. let everybody go at -- at it. the more you got, you will be able to feel what's real. >> little point here. i'm a great believer in

democracy. viewers and readers, they'll figure out what they need to know. they will make adjustments what are appropriate to their lives. our job is to put it out there but we need to put it out there correctly. in the last couple weeks, there have been two amazing stories. there was a story that sarah palin had signed a deal with al-jazeera. both of those stories were put out by a website. near story was checked and they both made it out there. may be rather than worrying about all of this big stuff, we ought to worry about the small stuff. he seems to be worried about everyday. which is just check it out. before you run it. part of the problem with the

web, i think, is not that it's killing us -- i'm from the state of arizona. it's like an e-mail and you say things in an e-mail that you never would have written in a letter. you can say things on the web that you never would have written down. it's just too easy to push the button and it's out there. you know what, i may not care about the guy with the abs but i care a lot about teaching students. just the journalism they're doing, check it out. learn to be a reporter. you can report on celebrities, you can report on politics, you can report on sports, you can report on the economy. if you don't know how to be a reporter, all you can be is a celebrity. that's all you can do. you got nothing. >> what scares me the most the

huge vacuum like the stuff we don't know that nobody is touching. the illusion that everybody can be known by getting online. leave this -- i have a simple illustration where santa monica in the branch court which doesn't get online, there was a stunning case in which about 20 young jewish professionals filed a lawsuit for anti-semitism against the hotel out of which they have been thrown by the owner on a sunday afternoon who they alleged was her pakistani family was going it pull funding if they found out there were 20 jews raising money at a pool party. which was authorized by the

hotel staff for the i.d.f. she came in and threw them all out. this is sitting in santa monica court. one quick round based on the complaint goes out on the internet and i'm looking at that thinking. i wonder who's right and wrong? what really happened here. which one is crazy? which one did it? what are these young professionals like? do they got a chip on their shoulder or for real? i live in santa monica. it is not my business to cover. uninvited, i dropped and i started sitting in the courthouse what turned out to be a three week trial. i kept dodging my duties. but running in there and listening to the testimony, it was awesome and amazing. the jury found against the owner which for good reason after she

had testified. there was not one reporter of any level in that trial. there was no local reporter. there was no a.p. reporter. there was nothing. my wife hadn't chased me into that and i filed to the executive editor of the paper. we stuffed it in the paper. how many times did that happen here and we don't know about it anymore. >> we talk about the blurring of lines and no one seems too unhappy about it. to me, look at it and i'm professional journalist. the governors and newscasters. it's all sort of mixed up. there are political scientist who argue, this is great. we're returning to late 19th century time when the public was

most engaged, at least limited public where half of the adults could vote. there were parades. there were times of real political engagement and now we're cynical and removed society. that's the argument. does the blurring lines have consequences for things like ethics? there are media organizations that pay their sours and pay far tips. tmz i think is one of them. there are others that don't. should we worry about that? should we worry about confusion about who is who? >> two things, first of all we don't pay for sources and we don't pay for information we pay for. photos we pay for video, absolutely. >> i have a little something

here -- i don't need a rubio. fair enough. that's one thing. clarification made. >> why do you care? what difference does it make who is running for office? what difference does it make -- i guess it seems like you want us to be upset about this blurring of the lines. i don't know what caused it and why there's this fascination with celebrities, you can't deny it's reality. you can sit and whine about it and you can complain that it's harder to cover a story now but or you can just deal with the reality of it. this is the way it is now. i don't have any issue with

having politicians or entertainers become politicians, i don't think that is a problem with that. the problem with ethics come down and the internet is part of this because everyone -- your deadline is two minutes ago. you don't have that thing where you wait until when the printing process starts running. or you wait until your newscast goes on at 5:00. you have to do it now. that can cause a problem with ethics if people just decide they're going to play lucy goosy with the facts. if you do that, then yes, you're going to have a problem with ethics. i always tell the interns, what's really important here? what's really important is speed. that's what's really important. what's more important is accuracy. yes. we need to have this now, now, now. it doesn't mean i want anything that you can find now. i want the actual story and i

want it now. that's what you got to push for. before you hit the button to publish, make sure what you're publishing is correct. the day that we published the michael jackson death was literally six people after the entire room was working on the story, standing around and harvey stood there saying, did we double check and do we have this. so we hit the button. that was story that was so big, you got to triple, quadruple check that this is correct. then you hit the button. if you ran off and print something and you hit that button before you know, you're going to get screwed. >> i'm not opposed to being

contrary. i remember jackie was days. i brought it to the editors and did what they did with it and i made it better again. everyone was really excited. i said we ought to find out if she's dead. that's pretty much the baseline. i -- honestly, that is no different. are the pressures, the speed pressure is different i imagine they are.

honestly, i don't deal with it everyday. are the economic pressures different? absolutely. there's no question about it hugely so. but the basic kind of truth of journalism if you don't get it right, you don't last very long in this. i just don't think it changed very much. >> the lines have blurred that i find personally very troubling. it's only in a way that makes it incumbent on all of you to think more clearly than we often do. all of lot of political and historical information we get now is coming from movies. i covered movies and i'm watching what happened in the last three or four years, movies at the lower end certainly documentaries and a fair number of dramatic films, as long as they're not the big driven

block bluster now move quickly. it up tooked two years to -- it took up to two years to get a movie running. we get a film that purport to tell us political stories and create political realities. i think there's something very beguiling particularly about documentaries, this fahrenheit 911 was the first time it hit me like a ton of bricks. it creates the illusion everything you're being told must be true because i see it. i see what a rotten guy he looks like. in the back of your mind you're thinking it must be true because the camera never lies.

as you well know the camera always lies in film, the camera is a director's tool that is used to structure reality not to report a reality. i think it's so easy for us to forget that and lose track of it that it becomes almost as if we all who report need a whole new set of tools to figure out, okay, how are we being used and manipulated by the benigned or inspirational or infuriating political tales we're being told. i would love to see somebody do a split level documentary where they took all the same footage. for fahrenheit 911, i like to see the first 60 minutes it tell an anti-bush documentary and then i like to see it re edit it. that is the one place --

>> two things, one, i actually think most of the documentaries are preaching to the choir. whatever harm there is, i agree there probably is some harm in a journalistic sense, is confined to people who really suffer from the primary information disease or time which is simply wanting to hear things you already believed to be true. >> that's number one. just on the subject of historical things, i live in phoenix so i go to movies really early in the day because that's what you do when you're old and in phoenix. we're walking on lincoln and there's an elderly couple, two or three years older than i am, behind me and the guy, the husband says, i thought that was great. she said that was good.

the husband said, i can't get over how much he sounds like lincoln. i turned around and i'm like my wife -- come on. may be things are happening too dam fast. >> one case where may be the lines are blurring and may be it's an issue. the fascination with celebrity. we were discussing this today. does it bother you that the first family seems to be attaching itself, this started way before then, attaching themselves very publicly to celebrities? is that an issue? does that bother you that may be they are getting too close to

them and why are they getting close to them? is it just for money for funding or because they want to be seen -- they want some of the shine that they get? >> may be it's the other way around. may be the celebrities want to hang out with the president. may be they get to shine the other way around. >> at the oscars, sitting there, every single off the record what the hell was that complaint about the oscar show, mentioned very upset that michelle obama showed up. not one person that i talked to that morning said they liked that. hollywood rebelled deeply against it. >> this is a great conversation. we want to bring audience into it. >> i know there are going to be dozens of them and we only have a limited amount of time. i want to remind you all four of them will be upstairs at our

reception. please to us and we'll pick you out. remember to say your first and last name. this is being recorded to be put up on our website by tomorrow morning. you can share it with your friends that couldn't be here tonight. and we have c-span here tonight and it will air probably next month. jennifer got the first question. >> first question. >> my name is aaron, i was troubled by the fact that one topic i thought really wasn't discussed very much here, we live in a democracy. people vote in a sense are responsible for the decisions made by our government that have an effect an our lives and people around the world. when entertainment starts crowding out real information

that people presumably need to make these decisions, i think it's a problem. if anyone is going to vote for or against marco rubio because of what he thinks about some rap star and other, we're in real trouble. i think so. is that not something that bothers you? there's some kind of responsibility that journalist have to society. >> i would agree. it would be a huge issue if someone voted for marco rubio because they too like tupac. that's not the right reason to vote for marco rubio. maybe you listen to what marco rubio says and make an informed decision. listen to what he says about issues. he's on your radar because you heard that because that's something that appeals to you. you're right, i think that all of that information is still out there. i guess the problem is, it's harder to find it and it's not

as -- it used to be you can turn on the news at 5:00 or 6:00 and you would get that information. now you're not getting it there. it's still out there. it's just you got to search for it. >> slightly different take on this. ....

while i do not think musical taste is a reason to vote for a person, knowing who the person is tells us a lot about those things we can't anticipate happening, but do happen when someone is elected president and they had to respond. than knowing how they feel about the deficit. >> but the camera always lies. i don't believe for one second

-- look, you read a landmark book. it has been 40 years that we have been dealing with this phenomenon. the nixon-kennedy bates. we are -- debates. we are trusting image. >> no, there are truths here. kennedy was more likable than nixon. even nixon liked kennedy more. [laughter] >> many of the things occurred, he might not have been more likable. >> let's get another question. >> hi. as a former longtime print reported that handles social media on a new site, i'm curious. you talk about the speed driving the decision making process. the other thing you did not get into was the impacts of big data, our understanding of the stories that people want to watch. part of what is driving the infotainment interest is that what are the audiences are showing in a very hard to refute way what they want to follow.

it is him is like big data in understanding the hard numbers of social media and seo are changing. they are going with the money us. -- is. >> true. that happened to magazines. magazines told you about something outside of yourself. it shrunk and died one by one. stories that you could hardly dream were occurring out there. every magazine was demographically driven. magazines have been put in a place where they fundamentally a mere were reflecting -- mirror reflecting the desired readership. it became a niche market.

there was a wallpaper for the people who are ready feel that way. -- already feel that way. what is happening with the internet, it is impossible to refute the pressures of traffic and the numbers. you will always do better by giving people what they want to stop but that is -- what they want. but that will not necessarily create value. sometimes a single, true fact that no one wants is still a single and true fact and is important. >> to me, what this stuff has done is make that data more precise.

but the data is what it was before. it was clear. people and executives would call and say, what happened at 10:15? we covered the war. i do not know what got into us. [laughter] >> has it been painful? >> it is funny to me. there is a lot of -- literally, most people who watch -- lawyers when they watch lawyer shows or doctors watch doctor shows, first of all, no one is having that much sex. [laughter] and it is never really that good.

[laughter] the a lot of things about internet, it increases speed. speed is an issue. the information is more precise. it is not that we do not have a sense, before we did. the argument, like a lot of things, it is a somewhat exaggerated sense of what has always been. >> princess diana sold magazines, but we knew that before. >> that is a vast difference. in tv, you grew up with ratings and feedback and knowledge. even unto this day, we still have editors who say, i do not care one person cares about this. do it. i had a story not that long ago

about chinese censorship in american movies. putas difficult to together. it have to do with the fact that american movie studios are running their scripts through chinese censors. they want the movie to play in china. nobody asked for that story. one kid in the whole world, a colorado state student, who asks about that. there is no demographic value for it. >> but it ended up in the paper. >> it did get there. >> hi. i want to push on a simple story question. you have been kind of alluding to it. overall, is this a crisis or

not? is it the same old thing? the crime rate is down and life expectancy is up. it does not seem like society is unraveling. >> first of all, i do not want to sound offensive of this, but this is a pretty good clue that i am about to. [laughter] i do not represent cnn and i do not want to. it does not that they do not want me to either. [laughter] i'm comfortable on network television broadcast. i do not want to be seen as uncomfortable. i was employee of theirs and abc, but they do not want me speaking for them either. i do not see it as a crisis. i think information democracy is kind of messy sometimes.

things can get messy. but it has always been that way in some way or another. this may sound like a copout and maybe it is, i do not know, but what we need from you is an diligence and what you do. you have to look for stuff. it is there. honestly, i mean you would not know it from this conversation, but the times is an amazing newspaper. whether it is that little. or an avalanche in washington state -- i cannot find that anywhere. people only look at the homepage. you do not get it. in every sense. we and the kids we teach, we need to work harder, better, faster, smarter, and more efficiently. >> here's a question -- is a

good infotainment and bad infotainment? what is the difference? if it is about important things -- >> that is completely subjective. i cannot put my finger on exactly why. i hate that word "infotainment." it is either entertainment or -- what we found in research is that people do not like the word news. they don't seek out news. doy get the news, but they not like to call it that. they want to be entertained. that is sort of what aaron was saying that maybe people watch msnbc or fox because they are entertained while getting the news. i do not think it is a crisis. i do not and you can say whether there is good or bad infotainment.

what do people want? it is a democracy. if you want to read about lindsay lohan, that is great. if you do not want to, you have the right to go read the new york times. >> i think you're right. it is not a crisis. for it to be a crisis, you have to believe that things were wonderful before and

that wonderful has died now. you have to be an idiot to think that is true. it is not. it is a time of enormous chaos. it is like periods in china history where we had 1000 years of chaos. things have not changed. it is incumbent upon everyone to do a lot of thinking about what they are reading and seeing and what it means and where they're getting it. can you imagine that you would've had get-togethers like this and that they occur all the time? everyone is sharing in that process of what is happening here? what is this all about? i think it is a good thing. >> it is time for one last question. please go upstairs for some wine, beer, soft drinks, whatever you like. you are great company. all of our guests will be there tonight. last question. >> matthew ross. i wanted to talk about this idea of feedback journalism. you talked about how some parity information has come out and is turned into actual news, like

what you said about palin. people have followed stories. it seems that the back journalism is happening so frequently now. everyone is on the same -- a lot of misinformation is going out because of this. if one person gets it wrong, everybody gets it wrong. it seems dangerous. >> i do not know if i would use the were dangerous, -- word dangerous, that there are sites that are aggregators. they want a start up on the site that they know people are searching for. if sarah palin is a hot topic, they will with that story up there. that is what i was referring to

when i said that can be a huge problem for ethics if you are running a site and your goal for the day is to get the biggest numbers you can get, it doesn't matter if it is true or is going to find the stories that i know people are searching for and it is easy to find the information, anyone can do that research and i'll put up those stories. then yes, that is dangerous. i have had many ties were people walked up to me and said, is it true about -- i think my sister called me and said there was a story. i said, no. that is not true. >> the last 18 months, there has been a shift of some kind. createdinant has enormous opportunity for us. once everyone gets in the habit of piggybacking and moving in one direction, it makes it far easier for someone who has a simple common sense to act in a contrarian way and pick off the next story and lead the next wave and lead the next wave.

when an individual reporter or editors develop that habit -- and i know many who cultivate exactly that skill -- it turns that into great opportunity for everybody else. >> what tmz does, you are transparent. thehave a show that shows process. should everyone do that? anyone can watch tmz and get a fair idea of what you do and make an informed decision of whether to trust you. there are morning shows where you see a little bit of behind- the-scenes, but it is the mainstream, the new york times, the big networks where it is more of the wizard of oz thing. it is still behind the curtain. maybe it takes into behind the times story meetings. i was in one.

>> going into a story meeting and distracting all of them -- one of the great problems you still have is that if you are grilling in hard on something that is difficult, a story that people do not want you to tell, you are going to deal in anonymous sourcing. you have a choice. you can print on the record lie or you can get to the bottom of something that is anonymous and off the record. i would not be we to assume someone should be able to put a camera over the shoulder of

every reporter. you will see a great deal of wrung out oftruth the system. the thing that worries me in all of this is just part of what i learned as a young reporter. it is not simply what was the story, but what is not the story? to mere is one thing beyond the business of journalism, it is the gatekeeper function of journalism. there is no gatekeeper function.

nobody is saying that is not the story anymore. somebody is running the story. there was a story when john kerry was running for president about john kerry having an affair with an intern, which was a sensitive subject given the clinton affair with an intern. foxnded up on drudge and on radio. my boss called him -- called me up and said what you doing with the john kerry and turn story? i said, nothing. there is not a simple fact in the story. a storyre talking about that has not a single fact. that is the gatekeeper function of a journalism. the next day, the candidate goes on imus, which is not a source of journalism. but it is a place where politicians go and denies having

an affair with an intern. at that point, i have no choice. the candidate has now denied something and i have to do it. this we are above it all game. story about the anatomy of a rumor, which we called dressing up a pig. it was still a pig. what the internet have stolen from us is not that ebay stuff gets out there more, but the way people figure that out. it is the stuff that should not be out there at all. the gatekeeper function is gone and it is not coming back. you guys have to live in a world where news is just thrown out there for you to pick through it. that is what scares me.

agree there is a crisis tonight and i will read the that is a crisis morceau and guy's abs.at is some >> i think we will leave that that. [applause] >> the event in los angeles from a couple of weeks ago hosted by zocolo public square. looking at the issueinfotainment and political 00 issue of infotainment and political journalism. what is behind political celebrity journalism? with political news shows are you watching?

would you give your news from. the phone lines are 40 those of you on the east coast. 880. for the is 202-585-he line 3882. make sure you meet your television before you call this evening. we have a number of posts on our facebook page. on twitter, we are following the #infotainment. joining us this evening is jane hall. as a journalism professor at american university. you have likely seen her on the fox news channel and on cnn's reliable sources and other places. us frome, joining

politico is patrick gavin, who about political personalities. thank you forne, joining us this evening. we are looking forward to a composition about -- about the broader issue of political news and entertainment. jane, i will start with you. if we had to do a survey of your students of american diversity and ask them when they got their news, what will we hear? read online and they read the new york times and the washington post and a look at c- span. they also get a lot of their take on the news from "the daily show." of a lot of is true young people. they read serious news, but they

like to take on the news on those kinds of shows. >> there was a lot of talk about the nuts and bolts of journalism and the tool pressure of getting it fast and getting it right. what is that pressure like for you at politico? politico mantra is to beat the competition when it comes to getting out stories and scoops. part and parcel of that is to make sure we get it right. politico has a hierarchy. editing process just like everybody else does. it is something every journalist has experience through your day job or on twitter or facebook. the decision of fact versus fast. there is a lot of pressure to get things up quick.

you have to make sure you get it right. 's studentsck to jane and some of them getting news from them getting "to the daily show," how does a publication like politico what could be fine line between being attention- grabbing and the information of uncovering a serious political scene in the country and elsewhere? vision,ve a narrow which is designed for intense political junkies. under that umbrella, anything that is political is relevant to us. that could be something about the american supreme court. it could be about the transportation bill. be about the nexus of celebrities and politics, which we see all the time. good be donald trump, it could

or the whitege house correspondents' dinner. we see the nexus happen more and more. we see this next is happening more was celebrity and politics, so we do that as well. what are you training your attendance of students for? where do they want to go? to the one to go work for a tmz or politico? >> i have not had anybody who wants to go work for tmz. a lot of them want to go work for politico. some of them are working for politico. andn future journalists future politicos that class.

my students are interested in journalism. to be aw that they have multi-media storytellers. to have a profile, which creates their personality. i wish we would devote the kind of resources that tmz spends on the things that are significant. everybody is praising them for checking up on that. that is what we still teach. we are also trying to educate for a universe of online, multimedia, you have to file a lot and you have to file quickly. to mention ant -- interesting term, multimedia storytelling. patrick, you consider yourself a multimedia storyteller?

>> if you are not utilizing your camera, your cell phone camera where you can, that is probably something you want to learn how to do. >> we have calls waiting. it is not to be unfair. evelyn is a journalist on the line. welcome and go ahead. ofi just have a couple comments. who is writing the headlines? i found a headline the of the day. we were collecting comments. immigrantsegal

should be detained or let go? >> where did you read that headline?im >> -- >> on that station in the morning. ofy were flashing headlines newspapers. ." on "washington journal one of the headlines was, advocated selling -- aggrevated felon release. >> i will let you go. politico get some attention- grabbing headlines. how important is that? for politico, it is a uniquely difficult challenge. , you have aicle decent amount of real estate to

spend on your headline. you have 35 characters, maybe a little bit more to explain what it is. it is a challenging thing. we have to describe what the article is about, but describe it accurately and do it in a it inlures readers in. difficultn be a format. depending on the platform you are writing for, you may have a limited piece of real estate to get the point across. to balance your needs to get it right and kept it in context, it is something the people who rise those are excellent at. news from the celebrity and political world. rush limbaugh, gay marriage is inevitable. in hiss that he made radio program. jane hall, this is where

celebrities or major media personalities make news about politics. it is more and more common. >> well, you know, it's very interesting, the gay marriage story. politicians are now falling over themselves to endorse gay marriage. when they were arguing that this is a reason that they needed to intervene because this is an oppressed group. now you have a lot of people in the media. still until the republican side. i guess you would call him a celebrity in a lot of ways in the sense that he carry as lot of weight, what he says when he wasn't after that young woman in georgetown. he said about her, about contraceptives. that because news. that it something that came in the campaign. he is setting the political agenda. >> let's go to allen town. allen is in brooklyn.

go ahead. 30thinking backing the last years when it was considered a personal choice and freedom a lot of people or drive without seat belts or drink as much alcohol because they figure it's their prerogative. now we realize that there are social costs to their behaviors. i think we are today about what these issues of the personal cost of personal behave. how much people pig out on sugary entertainment news. it's a matter of public concern that an electorate is voting wisely for the later generes that are going to be affected by our decision. they are collectively one that steers the ship of zate. later generations are passengers on this ship.

and we are going to shift. the only way we can steer the ship, this will be the debt, infrastructure is that if we have so much understanding, no a victim was crying. we are affecting people we're responsible for. >> allen, thanks for your comment here. >> well, think that's a very important point. you know, neighborhoods still according to the latest one. >> in fact, he was saying they're losing circulations to a lot of other places. i think the collar makes her that. we live and in a celebrity culture. i personally think that is lamentable in many ways.

it seems to be a way people can put their issue fort when you have somebody like george clooney using his fame to that could be a good use of celebrity. a bad use would be some selling ability -- some celebrity like anna nicole smith, that is a more serious issue in its own way. comments, whyse do we make murder, celebrities, and why are there now more beat journalists that go out and get the facts instead of repeating over and overblot again? hello? caller: i am very happy to be on here. someoneppy to hear

mentioned the newsroom program, because i was at the directors guild in california and spoke to sam waterston and wanted to know when the would the show be on again, because that wasn't more what should be a typical news program today rather than gross entertainment we are seeing. i would like to see a real news program at 7:00 p.m. in new york comparable to "the new york times," because most of the newsweek get that we see on ss andsion are just gloas writing that is repeated over and over again for three days, which is not news anymore. i would like to see a real news program in the hour when people are looking for it at 7:00 p.m. i think you for the show. host: what did you think about

her program that there is not a real news program? guest: also the previous caller as well, all those organizations have a responsibility to be respectful and do the news in a way that is beneficial to readers and a civic discourse. i am fairly consumer oriented on a lot of the questions that are being raised, which is there are amazing television programs. more of it-span, pbs, than we have had in any time in history. journalism, ifnt you want in-depth substantive journalism it can be found. the question is, and as we all know, "dancing with the stars "will dwarf what we're doing now. it will the charlie rose show.

while organizations have a responsibility -- they are a business and they will go where the news is. there has to be a two-way relations where they provide content, but at the end of the day, the demand in needs to be there and the expectation has to be there from the consumers for that the man to be met businesses. host: wanted to give our viewers a flavor of that program, that the anchor in that program offers an apology for the war in iraq. clip] --that was a clip of the americans like that moment.

adults should hold them accountable for failure. tonight i am beginning this newscast by joining mr. clark and apologizing to the american people for our failure, the failure of this program during the time i have been in charge of it to inform and educate the american electorate. let me be clear that i do not apologize on behalf of all broadcast journalists. i speak for myself. i was at an accomplice to a slow and repeated an unacknowledged and an amendment train wreck at failures that have brought us to now. i'm a leader at an industry that masscult election results, , andd up controversy failed to report on ships of our country, to the dangers that we actually face. that program is a fictional setting, but the

material very real. how often would we see something like that happen, how where is that bad and anchor personality would take responsibility or apologize for something in their reporting? caller: there is a lot of blame to go around and around the iraq war , iraq"the new york times" reported on how we did not know enough. defenseo add a little of the network newscast because they still at 7:00, abc, cbs, nbc, and have a newscast that i think covers the news. everybody has this dilemma in television. lot of veryne a serious news over time.

the caller may disagree, but i 22nk they are still getting million for those three shows. it is a problem. cn and just got a big ratings about covering the cruise ship that was addressed, and people said that was not serious is. there is a conflict between ratings and celebrity ratings and giving what people what they need. to be fair we should say there .re still serious news on host: on that cruise ships story that was on cn and a number of weeks ago, put yourself in the position of the managing answer. story,another national would that be your story of the day? tough: you put me in a stop. they have a new president who came from nbc.

they did not spend a lot of money to cover that, unlike wars, and they got a big bang for their buck. they might have pulled away from it sooner than they did. that is one of those dilemmas. host: that may get a response from patrick. they have all this video in. do you cover it or not? guest: if that is the direction they will bring in most viewers of it is difficult to blame them for trying to run a profitable enterprise. that was not the news of the day, but the reality is have to give the cable networks and a little slack because they are 24-7 and they need to fill the air time. it is either a cruise ship story or they are recycling the news. a tough call.

host: this tweet is from pamela. gay marriage is inevitable, and also from james come out ourhing infotainment, politicians celebrities and celebrities politicians? and infotainment, there is no more intelligent journalism in the mainstream. back to the phones, james, welcome. caller: thank you. alsoa writer, a poet, and and a part-time editor for person who covers town meetings in central massachusetts. say is toong i can

thatstories like the one did not have fax that keep getting repeated and should be cut off, probably harry reid's and was carried over and over again, and finally died of boredom. i appreciate c-span's coverage. of my news from c- span, listening directly. i am retired, so i have plenty of time, so i am doing some of my spreadsheet work here at home. host: let's go on to a student in texas. caller: hi. i have been watching this show, and it has been amazing, but my

question is, as a journalist student, we are talked to gap to bridge between the celebrity world which everybody is covering and also the real life, and my question is, is where am i supposed to do this? am i supposed to follow my heart to give everybody the news that i feel it is important or give them what they want to approve guest: i would say follow your heart. do what you feel comfortable with. then, i am very critical of media, but i think there are places that are doing straight news, serious news, and you need to align yourself with one of those, or start a blog. there are plenty of outlets. there is a lot of interesting work being done around data,

mapping, and a lot of things that were not present in the past. tois true that when i used work in magazines, i heard the has got tod rule, it be something that people know quickly. that is what we are up against in a lot of ways, and it does not mean you should abandon the ideas of doing serious work. i feel strongly about that. the piecesck, one of earlier from the public square talked about journalists building a brand, and that is through conversations on facebook, also a twitter handle. how important is that for you? guest: it is terribly important and maybe that is me being

short-sighted in terms of advancing my career. the reality is branding is important for a lot of reporters said the because he see in washington where journalism is a little bit better off than it is another part of the country. you see a lot of reporters jumping from news organizations to news organizations. back in the day if you did not you,"the post" name behind you were essentially nothing, and now you do not need to have that backing behind you, so to bring your readership with you. you see a journalist realized that his readers are coming to him for him, not for his organization, so he took his

work to his own site. great although rare example of how brady can be profitable, because you no health care, you do ot need the backing of an organization as long as your work is recognized. host: taking your calls about the intersection of infotainment and political journalism, when of the programs that a lot of folks talk about and a lot of folks mentioned where they get their news. daily a recent take "the show" had. >> we were going to have to take real and substantial action. over 3000 more american victims of gun violence. let's check in. the votes that have been taken gunkenakened have

control in america. >> ok. >> to prevent the justice department -- >> that makes sense. it prevents the justice department from tracking stolen guns. guns into a false sense of security. he is talkingclip about things that happened in terms of the gun-control issue. do people not only get news from him, but does he shape opinion? guest: he definitely shake's opinion. opinion.

the newspapers are covering gun control and the history of that. what most of my students find irritating is he points out the piper christie often. he will add it something where he shows karl rove or democratic counterpart saying one thing about how sarah palin is experience, but tim kaine is not an another clip. edits ts out and selectively what pundits say and shows how they are all over the map, and that put punchers a lot of the pretense and that irony is a very appealing to people, and sadly, there is a cynicism that you can have, but that is the reality and is part of his appeal. he cares about serious issues come up to. john, welcome to the

conversation. caller: good evening. where d to talk about jeff daniels is talking about an war.gy for the iraq do you think we will ever see any news person or involved in the media apologize for the lack of reporting about what happened nghazi? gag i have heard references to and and nicole smith and other minor celebrities, but as a military journalist and a newspaper reports , and i cannot get over the lack of attention that this has been in the popular press.

brown brought up that john carey became -- had an alleged affair and bi knowledge in it, it became a story. for that -- thanks for that is comment. what do you think about the comment that it has not been covered? no, andhe answer is people can disagree or agree about that. the main reason is a lot of people who are critical about how the us handled the situation are critical of exactly that, how the state department handled that. that seems to be the brunt of the criticism, and for better or worse, that will be a distraction for any news organization.

stops with the administration so ihe state department, do not think that is the best example in which you might see a apologize forr that. people apologize all the time, but usually on black and white issues. plagiarized this article, and every newspaper has a huge correction section every day. corrections get done, but on a more nebulous policy discussion where both sides have their talking points and contentions. news organizations will generally not apologize right away. host: pennsylvania. caller: good evening, and i am amazed that there has been something on tv like this right now.

yay, you guys. how the validity of thing, are you supposed to find news on the internet, when who argue supposed to trust? what happened with the freedom of the press? don't they have the responsibility? who are you supposed to trust if you cannot trust the people on tv that for years that our grandparents have been telling cnn, like the news, this is supposed to be news, and none of it is happening the way in this supposed to be. aboutwe were talking brand names in journalism. agree i think -- i do not with this thing that is often said which is it puts it back on the consumer and says you need to sample broadway, you decide.

that is a cop out, frankly. i think it is better to go to sources you feel have some level of depth and i object of a day. in cable newsned is that you have opinion more than reporting, because of the economics of how much it costs in part, because of the economics. it gets back to the question that it is fun to see a food fight, which gets into infotainment. punditry and rush limbaugh going after somebody, that is entertaining, but separate from that i would say find the sources that you see are reporting a start, and i'm a huge fan of newspapers. they have had cutbacks, and you can tell that, but they are doing what we call takeout on gun to control, how the nra has

had power for many years, that you can follow them and if you think the nra should be reported more thoroughly in the past, they could be faulted. then cause the story is an example of where the media either cannot or cannot feel they can report much work independently about what happened and you get into a political story, hillary clinton an accounting. i do not know if the state department knows what happened actually. host: california. hi, there. caller: go-ahead. i am upset because you have been talking about all the newscasts. you never mentioned things about and every now,"

morning i watch it. so much news that no one else covers that i am amazed that you are not talking about that. host: we asked at the beginning of the program where you get your news from. you listen to it every day? morning, and it is new is that not one other station covers. for chiming in. back togavin, this goes the previous comment that jane made great what does politico do on a daily basis to ensure that politico itself is a reliable source, that people coming back that itico ford is can trust? guest: the same type of sourcing that other organizations do.

the nice thing about journalism if politico gets something wrong, that will lose readers. every independent writer and reporter, the same thing. there is very little incentive to mess things up, little incentive to get things wrong, and you know that when you do that will be a huge setback for you and your news organizations, a tough thing to climb out of. if you do not have strict policies and plays, to make sure they are getting it right, then you are going to get it wrong more often. host: both of you have spent time in multiple news rooms. i want you to look at this clip and comment on the content of are going not what we to see, but the dynamic of the newsroom.

video clip] in greatk paul is shape. willink a leaner attire will accentuate that fizzy. paul rye and needs a makeover. >> it was boxy. >> like when you lose weight and back --right to gain it >> maybe this is another explanation. >> the board a jacket. mz editor and his staff.

patrick, when you see the program, how close is that to the newsroom at politico? guest: not similar. that may be easy fodder for people. i do not know if that you can get too worked up about that. that is what you expect when you go to tmz. times" ee that in "the you would be taken aback. ishink the fact that tmz interested in d.c. is a telling story and tells you a lot about the culture that has been bred in washington. i do not blame them for doing that. that is exactly how of their audience wants politics covered. host: you mentioned your

students wanted to go to work for tmz. not say that. i would not say i would encourage them. what they get is interesting. it is a mocking tone to that narrator. they report things, and when a reporter michael jackson, the reported on what happened with michael jackson. they have their facts straight. what that clip seeks is celebrities, politicians, and our politicians celebrities? now we require both male and female politicians to be good looking, and sarah palin was very attractive, and publications put her on the cover and running gear. i think the picture was picture -- i think the picture was from

magazine. there's something that we standard of good looks. abraham lincoln may not have been elected. abraham lincoln did not have abs, as far as i know. it is a hamster wheel. they know it is important to look good. it seems to be a factory in politics. host: on the issue of celebrities, here is a trick from nancy. -- a tweet. back to the calls. ill.,om mount prospect, you are on the air. caller: i just wanted to comment. i think it was a few years ago,

cuomo was on the a raley show. there were discussing the difference of opinion -- they were on the o'reilly show. he said, he will come back again, won't you? and he said, i will not come back. you are an entertainer not a journalist. host: you have been on his show in the past. guest: i would defend bill o'reilly. i would not say he's an entertainer. he is entertaining. there's a difference. he has a point of view. he is big into combat. there were two years were i debated him every week about the media. ,uomo is an intellectual figure but i think obama should have been on their much sooner being interviewed by him. they should go on there and give him a shot.

miami,enson, from florida, hello there. go ahead with your comment or question. hartman. listen to tom they took him off the radio. we have to listen online. lot of myere i get a affirmation from. one thing you need to addresses the issues dealing with all these corporations, buying up all of these news outlets. i think that is the reason we have the "dumbing down of the media." you do not have the independent news organizations going out and fighting those. i can remember as a child watching what cronkite, things like that. even though i'm a liberal, a really enjoy watching the video --c-span about the senator what's his name? bob dole back in 2007.

i thought it was really awesome. host: that is in our video library on c-span.org. patrick, do you think nowadays, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, there are more or fewer credible sources? guest: there are more media outlets. as the caller mentioned, there have been some isolated cases, documented cases in which reporters for news outlets have talked about the pressure they feel from their "corporate overlords." as we talked about it earlier, any news organization and their parent company is out to make a profit. they do create a climate in the newsroom of fear so they will get it done or what stories can and cannot be covered. ultimately, that newsroom will not create interesting and

compelling journalism. it certainly happens. there is a kind of nervous culture created in the news over,after their taken but they're fairly isolated. i would not make it a regular issue. our: 50 more minutes on conversation about political journalism and infotainment. jane hall from american university and patrick gavin. screenbers are on your to join the conversation. i #infotainment. now to bellevue, washington, welcome. good evening. thank you for c-span. i'm old enough to remember when

there was some semblance of a distinction between opinion and news in journalism. i believe from the early 1900's and then in 1960's we ended up with new journalism which was great for magazines like "time" and "newsweek." selfays, we have this selecting silo by people who listen to rush limbaugh or msnbc and it disturbs me greatly. i am still a great reader of newspapers, even if it's on mine and it has to be reuters. one thing that bothered me was the comment from ms. hall about i think it a sense, has gone over the line in terms

of the so-called gun culture, and i wish that pbs, the ap, these other sources who have traditionally been great would stick to journalism. that's great. host: do want to follow up on his comment? guest: not sure i was as clear as i meant to be. what i was trying to say is jon stewart has a clear point of view. i was trying to make the point that newton had fostered a lot of looking at the power and the players involved in legislation, or lack thereof, or by certain bills had sunset or why it had not happened in the past. my statement was aimed more toward reporting and i think it is something that has gone by the wayside and reporters are under pressure. they do not have the same resources. most news organizations have

had cutbacks and buyouts. what you lose in that is the kind of reporting that allows you to really go in depth. that is something that i think is lamentable. host: going back to tmz, here is their websites this evening. there's an article on a marble walters. she was doing an interview with president obama and made mention to the fact that she will be retiring next year. it seems in the last 10, 15 years, the presidents are often seen with celebrities and it does not seem to be news when the president shows up on late- andt with "david letterman" michelle obama was used in the oscars to present one of the awards. how much more frequently are we seeing this, patrick? what's the benefit to the president or the presidency for the association with celebrities?

guest: the reality is there has been a longtime relationship between d.c. and hollywood for a long time. the two of them feel like to given thet egos in this town. especially in the past four years, arguably because hollywood has been very ,upportive of president obama you have seen a very big spike in celebrity visitors to d.c. and the white house in particular. what we have also seen as well is a little reduction in the stigma that politicians might feel when it comes to associating themselves with celebrities. if there was a stigma attached with the president hanging out with a hollywood types, you would not see michelle obama at the oscars. if it was a republican president, i do not think the base would like seeing their president hanging out at the oscars given some of these

stereotypes that exist. inr knowledge the spike celebrity involvement and uc spiking in celebrity is coming tmzashington, d.c., and talks about paul ryan, michelle obama. magazine, theyle traditionally have no interest in washington because they think it is stated, boring, and still, but the sex appeal, for better or worse, in the past four years, it has significantly increased. megan and on politico, mccain, the daughter of senator john mccain, getting a television show.

caller: i'd like to say a few things about professor hall's comments about the appearance or real appearance of politicians. i guess that kind of means the old cliche that politics is show business for ugly people is kind of over. more seriously though, i kind of disagree. i do not care what any of these people look like or anything like that and i do not care and i think it kind of underestimates the obvious, which i think is really a big problem here. get thisre you nonsense because the powers that be, whatever it cliche you want to use, they do not think people want to see this serious news. i think if you do put out serious news on a regular basis, by and large, most people would if they thought it had some direct impact on their life.

we are talking about the decline in the standard of living for average americans, and that kind of stuff on a consistent basis. where you get your daily news from? it,er: anywhere i can get newspapers, television, radio, whatever is available at the moment. host: thank you for the call. have aree thing we really focused on his people in the public by using their celebrity. michelle obama, for better or the first lady as a person who personifies style, that has been a tradition. there's a lot of attention, probably too much, on what she's wearing, yet she has highlighted american designers. she has made a whole initiative about exercise, making school lunches more nutritious. i do not think an unknown person

who was not already having people curious about that would get that kind of attention. i think it is the use of celebrity and i think the first lady is in some ways, a celebrity. you can use it in a positive way. i think if i were that kind of person, i would be looking for ways to use it. was talkingy levin about the potential launch of what he is calling "tmz d.c.." and they're seeking to get younger users than younger people interested in politics. here's what he had to say. [video clip] >> the fact is young people are not interested in traditional media for the most part anymore because it does not speak to them. olderdience is getting and older. when young people are not coming and old people are getting older, you know what

happens in the end. inevitable. when you look at what happens with the dynamics of the audience, then the question is what are people doing to attract those young people? whatgenerate interest in is really important, which is the news? when i say the news come it can be politics, city government, celebrity, but what do you do to attract those people? then the question is how the reinvent yourself? host: patrick, what is the demographic for politico? .uest: it is not age-specific it is a pretty narrow group. we want the country and the world boxing most intense political junkies. the people who are most devoted to what goes on in washington

and governments around the country. that is not a wide field, not as wide as appeal of harvey's site or cnn. that is the mission we have been set on. >> do think the way news is delivered today, more specifically twitter, with people having streams of news and getting quick and bits of stories from articles length on twitter, is that the way of the future? what does that say about long- ?orm journalism reporting guest: there is no doubt the people are consuming their media in different ways, but this swings back and forth. obviously, right now, and for the past decade or so, you have seen hyper-speed news cycles. but then the pendulum swings and wallis get this slow news when

need people saying they want to spend more time actually flushing a story out and you get readers sick of twitter and the information overload. think the news i cycle will go on. you're going to get news coming at you at hyper speed and you're going to get times when people are just completely overwhelmed. this is the nightly news audience. they do not have time to check twitter every day. these are newspaper readers. they just want someone to tell a three-section newspaper or a 30-minute broadcast what they need to know. there is still a big audience out there not necessarily on twitter or getting all of their new online. let's check twitter one more time for comments. we would get a couple of quick

calls here. welcome. go ahead. caller: i'm really big fan of this show. about infotainment, should it be infoslavement? i feel with the government sending media packages to tell them what to do, they do not understand the difference between news and what they see on the tv because it feels like shackles and chains. i went to columbus day and i took a pop culture costs. guess,ed so crazy, i because it did not fully understand what was going on, but you kind of see a higher level of what the elites, or whatever, do not want you to see. i just wanted to know if you had talked about that?

host: jane r. patrick, do you have something to add? on to something that patrick said. ipads, mobile devices, people are getting headlines that way, but you can go in deeply. there's a lot of experimentation and worked going on about the safety of your water supply and you can look up your city. not want this to say that nothing new is good for everything in the past is gone. there's a lot of interesting experimentation and. the advertising revenue has not been there for a lot of that. host: is the concern somewhat the delivery for the news is fading away as people get ipads and readers, things like that, but the demand for journalism and news is still there.

ideally for news organizations like politico, the advertising will come back? >guest: i hope so. is journalism what we are trying to talk about or is it the survival of hard copy newspapers? i think newspapers on line, for everything i have read, have a very strong brand. they're doing a lot of very interesting things that are an ad jong stand an add-on -- adjunct and add on. host: state college, pa., family -- emily. caller: concerning celebrity and people believing where they want, i am in pennsylvania where there is the big scandal and joe paterno was quite the celebrity. in his own grand jury testimony, he admits to being told that he was doing something of a sexual

nature with a young boy for over 10 years. but turner never try to locate that boy or rescue other victims, yet the people here in city college reduce this to dr. than continue to make a hero of joe paterno. saying, we were all totally unaware, yet in his own words, he admitted that he knew and did not do anything. i notice there's a lot of pandering because paternal is such a celebrity. newspapers, a student, news outlet, if you do not pledge allegiance to him, i used to hate the show that played out court cases on the news, but the best thing that happened in state colleges that the national news people came these things under the light. people here will not read the grand jury's presentation and

they refused to see the truth. there are signs all around us that they will restore paternal's wins. the breaks my heart to see people not siding with the victims. host: thank you for the call. patrick, a response and any final comments? guest: it may be a good parallel that there is a temptation by many journalists to provide coverage or source briefing isries where joe schmo brought in and you will see a slew of these profile pieces that are largely very flattering and hopefully he will become a good source of yours. that is a temptation that is a daily challenge for reporters, because what is so interesting about washington is it is one of the few cities in which there are more reporters than there

are sources. sources control the information. sources no that, hey, i've got this great scoop down by have seven outlets that will take it, is to you will go to the out where you think he would get the fairest treatment. and it's not like you're living in a small town in arkansas and there's only one paper so you have to give it to that paper whether you like them are not. to connect this to the caller's analogy, there is the temptation that the reporters have to fight to not get too cozy with some of the bigger figures around town. host: jane hall, your final thoughts on tonight's topic of infotainment and political journalism? guest: we have established there is a natural affinity between celebrities and hollywood and the trend is more towards celeb rification. it was a newspaper that uncovered ultimately what the

grand jury was investigating about sandusky. whether joe paterno got other coverage, he did. in a way, i think that illustrates what we have been talking about tonight. host: jane hall is a full-time journalism professor at american university. patrick gavin writes for politico. you can follow his reporting on politico.com. patrick and jane, thank you for being with us. the conversation continues on line. thank you for your calls. facebook.com/cspan, post your thoughts on the connection between political journalism and it infotainment. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> in 90 minutes, live to the port of miami in florida where obama is expected to focus on

investment and infrastructure, specifically port funding and improvement. florida governor rick scott criticized them as being "late to the party." they are awaiting tens of millions of dollars for parts of miami and jacksonville. miami is the site of a dredging project expected to create 30,000 jobs. we will bring you those remarks live at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c- span. coming up tonight, "booktv" program "in depth." and randall robinson from trans- africa. american history tv looking at u.s. naval history. on c-span, a town hall meeting for the commission on political reform, bipartisan policy center, here's a preview. reagan,not know if mr. if somehow he could join that, if he could say, yes, sequestration would happen on

his watch, there would have been an effort toward this bipartisanship. a really think american politics today has migrated from an nfl atmosphere to "hundred games -- "hunger games." in the nfl, you did everything it can to be victorious. outplay and out hit your comment. commendable reach down and lift their opponent back up. to make suremes" your opponent can never get up again. we have to remember that we are americans, working together for this country, not just the parties. >> that event at the ronald reagan library in simi valley, california. we will have the entire program at 8:00 including your phone calls here on c-span. >> there is the dallas city

hall. 1963, dallas4th, nightclub operator jack ruby shot and killed lee harvey oswald, the man arrested for the assassination of john f. kennedy. hear firsthand about the retrial from a juror who kept a trial -- a diary of the trial proceedings. he looked alone. he looked forlorn. he just really looked pitiful. he never said anything, never smiled. i made eye contact with him. fixed, with sort of a vacant stare, i guess you could say. he looked like he was just floating away in the world and i felt sorry for him. >> part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3.

year, we received a record 1893 entries from over 3500 students for the c-span student camera video, -- competition. watching the winning videos with their messages to the president daily for april beginning at 6:50 a.m. eastern on c-span. see all the winning documentary's on studentcam.org. , the supremeweek court ruled 5-four using a drug sniffing dog immediately outside a home is unconstitutional search and requires a warrant. the court's decision limits of the police's as a trained dogs outside a home. justice scalia, who wrote the opinion, said the home is first among equals and while a police officer can approach a home without a warrant, there is no inherent invitation to have a trained police dog explore the area. his opinion was joined by

thomas, ginsberg, sotomayor or, and kate in. -- and kagan. >> we'll hear argument first this morning in case 11-564, florida v. jardines. mr. garre. >> thank you, mr. chief justice, and may it please the court -- in the three prior cases in which this court has held that a dog sniff is not a search, this court has emphasized that a dog sniff is unique, both in terms of the manner in which information is obtained and the nature of the information revealed. as to the latter point, this court has emphasized that a drug detection dog reveals only the presence of contraband, and no one has a legitimate expectation of privacy in that. >> i mean, that just can't be a proposition that we can accept across the board. nobody under that view has an interest in contraband in their home. the question is, can you find out the contraband? it's just a circular argument. and if -- and in the -- was it

the caballes case that talked about that, if i have the right name? that was where the contraband was visible, it was almost like the smoking gun falls out. well, of course, there's no interest in the smoking gun when it falls out in front of you. so i just don't think that works. >> well, justice kennedy, in the caballes case, the contraband wasn't visible before the dog alerted. in the home case, we're not saying that you don't have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the home. of course, you do. the question is whether you have a legitimate expectation >> so doesn't that mean that what's in your home that's not visible to the public has an expectation of privacy as well? >> not when it comes to contraband, your honor. and we think that the kyllo case helps >> but that -- that is circular. then why do you need a search warrant? if you have no expectation of privacy in the contraband, why bother even with a search warrant? >> because, your honor, when you have a search warrant and you go into a home, there's going to be a lot of private

information that you're going to come across, even if your expectation is finding evidence of a crime. >> mr. garre, does your argument mean -- you say minimally intrusive, and that the dog will detect only contraband, that the police then are to go into a neighborhood that's known to be a drug dealing neighborhood, go into -- just go down the street, have the dog sniff in front of every door, or go into an apartment building? is that -- i gather that that is your position. >> your honor, they could do that, just like the police could go door to door and then knock on the doors and hope that they will find out evidence of wrongdoing that way. but the two responses this court has always pointed to is the restraint on resources and the check of community hostility. here, the police were combatting a serious epidemic of grow houses, hundreds of houses each year that were a scourge to the community, not only in terms just of the drugs that they were growing >> suppose -- suppose the house had on the lawn, no dogs allowed?

>> i think that would be different, your honor. it would be -- and that's a way in which the house is different than a car. homeowners can restrict access to people who come up to their front door by putting gates or a sign out front. >> well, that's right. and there's such a thing as what is called the curtilage of a house. as i understand the law, the police are entitled to use binoculars to look into the house if if the residents leave the blinds open, right? >> that's right. >> but if they can't see clearly enough from a distance, they're not entitled to go onto the curtilage of the house, inside the gate, and use the binoculars from that vantage point, are they? >> they're not, your honor. >> why isn't it the same thing with the dog? this dog was brought right up -- right up to the -- to the door of the house. >> your honor, first of all, i think that, as this case comes to the court, the police were lawfully present at the front door.

the was established by courts below, and we don't think that they've challenged it here. that's at least true with respect to the police officer. the police officer could go up to the front door and knock and detect the smell of marijuana, just like officer pedraja did. >> well, then we've taken an unrealistic case, if that has been conceded, because it seems to me crucial that this officer went onto the portion of the house that -- as to which there is privacy, and -- and used a means of -- of discerning what was in the house that -- that should not have been available -- >> well, i think the way you would >> in that space. >> i think the way that you would answer that question, your honor, is, of course, there's a curtilage that extends around the house and protects, in which the homeowner has a reasonable expectation of privacy. it's well established, we think, going back to the common law, that there is an implied consent for people, visitors, salesmen, girl scouts, trick-or- treaters, to come up to your house and knock on the door

consentbut not implied for the policeman to come up with the dog. the only purpose of the dog is to detect contraband. so you can say, yes, there's an implied invitation to the girl scout cookie seller, to the postman, even to the police officer, but not police officer with dog, when the only reason for having the dog is to find out if there's contraband in the house. >> well, justice ginsburg, first of all, i think, if the girl scout or the salesman or the trick-or-treater brought up a dog with them, there would be complied consent for that too, at least as long as the dog was on a leash. i don't think the subjective >> this is not any dog. this is a drug detecting dog. >> no, that's right. but i don't think it changes the subjective purpose of why they brought the dog with them. >> why is that an implied consent? that's a huge assumption. at least in the cities that i've lived in, you have to have a dog on a leash.

and you don't give implied consent. if you're allergic to animals, you don't want dogs walking around at your door. >> well, you can certainly put the "no dogs allowed" sign out front. and there, there would not be implied consent. >> no, no, no. but tell me why that you presume that there's implied consent? >> well, we start with the proposition that >> do you think homeowners freely let dogs just come into their apartment? i mean, there might be some homes that do. >> well, certainly not in the apartment, your honor. dog search took place, the walked up the same way that a salesman would and alerted at the front of the door. he didn't go in >> so we're going to treat it like a human being now? you're invited to knock on my door because you're a dog? >> no, i think -- and certainly this is true in my neighborhood, your honor, is neighbors can bring their dog up

on the leash when they knock on your front door, and i think that's true in most neighborhoods in america. homeowners that don't like dogs and want them off their property have a way to combat that, and that's putting a fence around it to say, no dogs >> so now we tell >> allowed. >> all the drug dealers, put up a sign that says "no dogs." >> well, they could, your honor. there are certainly houses that have that. but with respect to the question >> isn't it fair just to assume that -- what's logical? i -- i let people knock on my door because they have to say something to me. i don't let a dog come up to my door -- i don't willy-nilly invite it to come up to my door. >> and i think -- your honor, i think the reason why that doesn't work here is that if you ask that question with respect to the officer, i think it's well settled or accepted that police officers can walk up the front path, absent a sign or something, knock on the door -- >> that implied consent, does that include them coming up and -- up to your porch and sweeping stuff into a garbage pan? >> i don't think it would, your honor. i think that we're talking about going up there, knocking on the door. the police officer cannot just >> police officers can come there to knock on the door, but i thought you've conceded that police officers can't come there to look into the house with binoculars, right? >> with binoculars >> when the purpose of the officer's going there is to -- is to conduct a search, it's not permitted. >> if the purpose of the police officer here, for example, was to walk up to the house, hope that they answered the door, or hope that once they were up

there, that they would smell the odor of marijuana, as officer pedraja did, that would not convert it into a search. there was no invasion, physical invasion. >> that's true, but if you're looking at expectation of a reasonable homeowner, imagine you have a home, a long driveway. you do expect people to come up and come into the house, knock on the door, maybe even with dogs. do you expect them to sit there for 5 to 15 minutes, 15 minutes, not knocking on the door, doing nothing? i mean >> well, your honor -- >> is that something i wouldn't -- would you be nervous about that? >> i think >> anyone coming to your door and not knocking. whatthink what -- i think happened here >> just sniffing.

>> well, i think everyone accepts when someone comes to your door, they can avail themselves of their god-given senses, whether it's looking into a window without binoculars, taking -- breathing in and smelling the air, as officer pedraja did. i don't think there's a constitutional difference when the person has >> no, there is in this sense. justice scalia just said it. he said, you do have an expectation of people coming into your door, perhaps even with animals, perhaps even with binoculars, but not looking into the house, not looking into the house from the front step with the binoculars. now, why is that unconstitutional? because it's very unusual that someone would do that, and a homeowner would resent it. >> well, your honor >> would a homeowner resent

someone coming with a large animal sitting in front of the front step on his property and sitting there sniffing for 5 to 15 minutes? forget the sniffing. just talking, loud noises. is that something that you invite people to do? >> your honor, what i think you can say there is implied consent to is a dog accompanying a person on a leash walking up to the front door, taking a sniff in a matter of seconds, not minutes -- >> ah. is that what happened here? >> well, that's not what the record says, mr. garre. >> i thought what happened here was 5 to 15 minutes. >> i mean, the record suggests that he put the dog on a very long leash, the dog goes back and forth, tries to figure out where the smell is coming from. it's not just -- you know, my first thought was you go up to the door, the dog barks once, and that's it. but you read the record, this dog is there for some extended period of time, going back and forth and back and forth, trying to figure out where the greatest concentration of the smell is. it actually seemed, from my reading of the record, to be, you know, a lengthy and obtrusive process. >> your honor, i think what the record shows is, is that the dog was on the scene, i.e., at the curb, walking up, going

back into the car, and then leaving, for a total of 5 to 10 minutes. walking up to the front steps, sniffing, alerting and leaving is a matter of seconds or minutes. it's not -- the dog isn't up there for 5 to 10 minutes. it happens very quickly. i think in thinking about reasonable expectations of privacy, it is important to keep in mind physically what's happening in these houses. these people are growing drugs in the houses with the aid of electricity and light and heat. and they need -- they need air conditioning in order to control the heat. and that air conditioning is blowing a very strong odor of drugs out into the public, and the people know that. they know that. we know they know that because they use mothballs, which officer pedraja found here at the front of the house, outside of the house. and so what you're talking about, although we talk about what's going on in the home, really what's happening here is odor of illegal contraband is being blown out into the street and someone is coming up to it and using their god-given senses in a way that humans and dogs have used for centuries and detecting that. >> well, we've had a lot of -- we've had a lot of discussion about whether it's 5 minutes or

15 minutes or whether it's mothballs. i understood the issue before us to be whether or not under the fourth amendment it is a search for a dog to come up to the door and sniff, not with respect to we're not making a judgment, i thought, on the probable cause in light of the totality of the circumstances, but the ground of decision below was this is a search when the dog sniffs. >> that you need probable cause just for the dog to sniff. no, that's absolutely right. and the dog sniff itself clearly is not a physical invasion in the same way that looking is not a physical invasion under the common law. and the dog, we think >> it isn't just the sniffing in the abstract. it's the sniffing at this point, the sniffing at a person's front door, right? i mean >> well, that's true, your honor, but i think if it wasn't a search for the police officer to walk up there and sniff and report smelling live marijuana, then it wasn't a search when franky walked up there and alerted to the presence of an illegal narcotic. >> well, i didn't say it wouldn't be a search if the police officer himself did that if he went there with the intention of -- of smelling at the door. he's going there to search, and he shouldn't be on the curtilage to search. >> i think it's been conceded in this case, at least it was

below, that the officer could walk up there, knock on the door, report the smell of marijuana, and that that was not a search. >> mr. garre, this is what we said in kyllo. and i'm just going to read it. we said, "we think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a search, at least where, as here, the technology in question is not in general public use." so what part of that do you think separates your case from this one? in other words, what part of that language does not apply in this case? >> well, first of all, franky's nose is not technology. it's -- he's using -- he's availing himself of god-given senses in the way that dogs have helped mankind for centuries. >> so does that mean that if we invented some kind of little machine called a, you know, smell-o-matic and the police officer had this smell-o-matic machine, and it alerted to the exact same things that a dog alerts to, it alerted to a set of drugs, meth and marijuana and whatever else, the police officer could not come to the

front door and use that machine? theour honor, i think contraband rationale would be the same. it would be different in that you don't have technology in this case. importantk that's an distinction because, as we read kyllo, the court was very concerned about advances in technology, and that's just not true for a dog's nose. >> so your basic distinction is the difference between like a machine and franky. >> well >> that we should not understand franky as kind of a sense-enhancing law enforcement technology, but we should think of him as just like a guy. >> your honor, i think that's true for two reasons. one is franky is using the same sense of smell that dogs have used for centuries. so this isn't a case where if you allow a dog to sniff today, he might use x-ray vision in the future. that's not going to happen. and the other thing is that

frankly -- that the use of dogs for their sense of smell, which everyone agrees is extraordinary, mankind has been using them for law enforcement type purposes for centuries. >> not this -- not this purpose. you said centuries, but i think you recognize that it wasn't until the seventies when the dogs were used to find culprits. but to use it in this way i think it was only since the seventies. >> well, to use it for drug detection purposes, that's right. but they've -- we've been using dogs to track thieves for centuries going back before the founding. scotland yard -- scotland yard used dogs to track jack the ripper. that's the same type of way in which they are being used here. the fact is today they're looking for drugs in this context, but -- >> mr. garre, there's no dispute that dogs can smell what human beings can't, is that correct? it's not that we can find a machine to put it on a human being to enhance their sense of smells, dogs can do something

human beings can't. >> they have a much better sense of smell, that's right. but i think if you look at >> so you have to treat him like a guy, to think that he is not like technology in terms of augmenting what a human being can do. >> well >> he's not augmenting what a human being can do. he's substituting what a human being can do. >> he's -- the dogs, no doubt, have an enhanced sense of smell compared to the officer. but i think that's really not functionally different than using an airplane to look into the house, like in florida v. reilly. and in that sense, i think this case is a lot like that. in florida v. reilly, the officers used a helicopter to fly over the drug house, and they saw exposed marijuana. here, you're using the drug detection dog to smell the odor of marijuana that is being pumped out of the house into the street. and the people who use the house know that. they know that, and we know they know that because the mothballs were present. mothballs are a masking agent. people don't have a legitimate

expectation of privacy, this court has held, in things that they knowingly expose to the public, even in the home. that's what the court said in florida v. reilly. it's what it said in katz itself. and i think, here, one way to resolve it is to say people who live in grow houses with a distinct odor of marijuana, who know that that is being pumped out into the street because of the air conditioning that they need to run the grow houses, there is no invasion in their -- in their expectation of privacy when either a man or a dog, when lawfully present on the property, uses their god-given senses to detect that. if i could reserve >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you. >> ms. saharsky. >> mr. chief justice and may it please the court -- i'd like to go right to two points that respond to the court's questions. the first is the question of whether the officer and the dog were lawfully in place, whether they could approach the front door, was conceded below. and, as the court -- as the case comes to this court, that is not an issue before the court. and i want to make sure that the court has >> i didn't -- i didn't understand the concession to be that the police had come to the door with the dog, the sole purpose of the dog being to

detect contraband. >> well, let me give the court specific citations on that. the court of appeals, the florida court of appeals, found that the dog and the officer were lawfully in place. that's ja pages 104, 105, 112, 116 and 120. before the florida supreme court at oral argument, respondent conceded that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the porch, and the florida supreme court accepted that concession. that's petition appendix page 31, also noted by the dissent in pages 78 to 79. in the brief in opposition to cert, respondent said that the police could approach the front door for a knock and talk, and made no separate argument about the dog's presence there making it not lawful. so as this case comes to the court, it is with the dog and the officer lawfully in place at the front door, approaching the front door just like any girl scout, trick-or-treater, or anyone else could. and just to respond, justice ginsburg, to the questions that you raised, the police

officer's purpose in approaching the front door does not mean that the officer can't come to the door. the court has said in many contexts that officer purpose doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter if the officer is looking for a lost child or thinking that that >> you're agreeing with mr. garre that the police could take a dog and go down every house on the street, every apartment in the building? >> well, assuming that the police can lawfully be in the place that they are going with the dog, which is conceded here -- >> a house just like this house? >> if they are approaching the front door using the normal path, because the dog only detects contraband, yes, they could be used in those circumstances, but that's not happening. there have been justices who've warned about that >> well, so any home, any home anywhere, and we should say that that's ok, and we can say it's ok because the government won't use it? >> there are justices that have warned about this for over 30 years, and these problems have

not come to fruition. there are restraints on police resources. there's the potential for community hostility. if you look at the cases that have arose in the courts of appeals -- >> this court has dealt with an item that was seized before, a piece of luggage, a car. they have not dealt with the dog sniff in the context of a home that's not seized. >> but in caballes, where admittedly the court did not decide this specific issue, it distinguished the case of kyllo as saying that that was finding out about lawful activity in the home, and that a person -- the critical distinction between kyllo and the dog sniff in caballes is that a person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in contraband. >> i just -- again, as i told mr. garre, i just can't accept that as the premise for the case. the argument we're having about whether there is a reasonable expectation in society generally, whether or not the police because of limited resources are not going to have -- that's all fine. but this idea that, oh, well, if there is contraband, then all the -- all the rules go out the window, that's just circular, and it won't work for me, anyway. >> well, i wanted to be sure to respond to that, justice kennedy, because i would hate for the court to have the

impression that all the rules go out the window. that's not the case. what we're talking about here is a sniff that would allow the police to go to a detached and neutral magistrate to say that, we have probable cause >> fine >> to get a warrant. >> but don't ask me to write an opinion and say, oh, we're dealing with contraband here, so we don't need to worry about expectation of privacy. there is simply no support for that because caballes cited jacobsen, and jacobsen was where the contraband fell out of the package and it was in plain view. so that just doesn't work, at least for me, in this case. >> well, the reasoning in contraband -- in jacobsen, though, the court said that the rationale, the reason for its decision in place, is because when you're talking about people's reasonable expectations of privacy, they have both a subjective and an objective component. so it's not just that you want to keep something private, it's that you need to have a legitimate expectation that you can keep that private. and the court has said over and over, in place, in caballes, in jacobsen, that you do not have a legitimate expectation with respect to contraband. that doesn't mean that the >> again, i don't think the cases go that far because those were cases in which the contraband -- jacobsen -- was in plain view.

everybody knows that it falls out of the package. at that point, you don't have any what you're saying is, oh, well, if there is contraband in the house, then you have no legitimate expectation of privacy. that, for me, does not work. >> what we're trying to say, justice kennedy, is not that you lack any privacy expectation in the home. that's why you need to get a warrant before going into the home. all the dog sniff allows is for the police to try to go to a magistrate and establish probable cause to get a warrant. >> that's fine. we can talk about reasonable suspicion. that's all ok. >> how does what you're saying, ms. saharsky, square with karo? because in karo, the only thing that the beeper alerted to in the home was the can of ether, which was clearly an item that was being used for drug manufacture. and there was nothing else other than that item, which you might not call it contraband, but it was evidence of illegality, this can of ether. there was no thought that it was used for anything else. and that was the only thing that the beeper alerted it to, and, yet, nonetheless, we said,

you know, of course that's a search. >> i think that my answer touches on the point that you made, which is it was not contraband. the police thought that it might be evidence of a crime, but the court did not say it was contraband. and, actually, there was a discussion at the oral argument, where defense counsel made very clear that ether has many lawful uses. that makes it different from what the court considered in place. this came after the court's decision in place. >> well, not lawful uses in somebody's house. i mean, maybe lawful uses in a factory or in an operating room, but nobody has cans of ether in their house unless they're making drugs. >> well, with respect, your honor, the defense counsel i think correctly suggested in the karo oral argument that, in fact, there are lawful uses in photography labs in houses and the like. he actually had an expert that came to the suppression hearing in that case and testified about the various lawful uses of ether in a house. so i think, as the argument came to the court, the government was not making an argument that that was contraband or evidence of a crime. the government was just saying, oh, it's very limited information, because we had already -- we had already tracked the ether to the house, so you weren't finding out much. and the court said basically

what it said in kyllo, which is, it might not be much, but it's still about lawful information, activity in the house, and that's protected. but in caballes, the court came back and said, sure, we've said kyllo, lawful activity in the house, but your interests in protecting contraband are different, those are not legitimate interests. and the court has said that again and again and again. >> but in kyllo -- and i think this was what justice kennedy was saying. in kyllo, there was already a seizure that had happened, and the court just said, this is no -- this is really no greater an intrusion. >> well, with respect, when we look at the -- when we look at the language in these cases, in caballes and the like, you know, the court wasn't saying, oh, it's not a search because this has already -- this had already been seized and nothing more was happening. the court said it was not a search because there is no legitimate expectation of privacy. and just to be clear, the question about whether folks have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to contraband in their house has to take into account two facts -- first, that we're only talking about contraband, but, also, that dogs have been used and known for centuries for their sense of smell. >> yes, but i -- what i'm curious about, and it's an unanswered question for me, is we are considering whether the

dog sniff is permissible, so i wanted to know what a dog sniff at the front door involves. and at page 96, 97, 98 of the joint appendix, with which you are familiar, it explains that. it isn't just going up and (indicating), that's it. it's a process called bracketing. they describe it at length. the officer, the dog officer, said he was in a rush that day and it didn't take more than 5 to 10 minutes. and my question really is whether an ordinary homeowner expects people to walk down the curtilage and, with a big animal, and the animal -- they don't knock. they behave in the page 96, 97, 98 way. i subjectively think, well, that's pretty unusual behavior, whether it's a policeman or anybody else. so what do you respond? >> this sniff occurred very quickly, and it >> it was 5 to 10 minutes and it's 96-97. >> right. i think the 5 to 10 minutes, like counsel said, was the whole

process of of bringing the dog up to the door, et cetera. the sniff happened very quickly. but putting that to the side, what the dog is doing is sniffing things that have been exposed to the public from inside the house, smells that the officer himself could smell, could smell in in plain smell. and the court has said in other cases, like in place, that what the dog is doing is very limited in scope, it happens very quickly, there is no physical invasion, it's something that actually this court has said in florida v. royer is something that we want officers to do, because it >> could i follow up on justice breyer's question, because it strikes me as a little confusing. does the dog, as soon as he or she is at the door, sniff and sit or sniff and not sit, or does the dog -- i mean, you've talked about the sniff is immediate. what -- what is the 5 to 10 minutes? >> the 5 to 10 minutes as i read the record was the whole process. the -- the dog sniff i think took seconds or maybe a minute or 2 minutes

>> and the whole process is -- is what? >> that they were -- that they met at the front gate, that they were walking up to the -- to the door, that the dog did the sniff, that the -- that he talked to the other officer, and then he went back to his car, which was parked i think some some length of time away. so -- >> it doesn't take the 5 to 10 minutes to walk to the door. so the officer walks to the door, the dog sniffs right away and then? >> well, the dog sniffs. he has to find the strongest source of the odor. so he starts sniffing right away. he sniffs around for a few seconds, he finds the strongest source of the odor and he sits down at that place. >> where -- where in the -- where in the record do i find the few seconds point? >> well, i think the -- probably the cites that -- that justice breyer gave are the cites that describe it. so i'm not sure that there is something more specific than that. >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you. >> mr. blumberg. >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court -- police officers taking a narcotics detection dog up to the front door of a house is a

fourth amendment search for two distinct and separate reasons. first, when police reveal any details inside a home which an individual seeks to keep private, that is a fourth amendment search and that is exactly what a narcotics detection dog is doing, revealing details in the home the individual seeks to keep private. >> that's your first reason and i don't want you to be deterred from giving us the second, but if we can concentrate on that for a minute. that seems to me a proposition that's equally unacceptable to what the government is saying, that you have no interest in contraband. the police often, when they have ordinary conversation with people, want to find out the details of what that person is doing, where the person lives, what goes on in the house. "hello, have you had a nice time at the at the park today? i see you're coming home with your children, is this where you live? " this is all routine conversation that we always have in order to try to find out what people are doing, what they

are like, where they live. so i -- i think the statement, and you you repeated it quite accurately from what you have at page 16 of your brief -- just goes too far. thatecisions "establish police action which reveals any detail an individual seeks to keep private is a search" -- that is just a sweeping proposition that in my view, at least, cannot be accepted in this case. i think it's just too sweeping and wrong. addustice kennedy, i would a few words to the end of that statement -- anything that an individual seeks to keep private in the home, and that's the difference. your hypothet about conversation, certainly a police officer can talk to someone and ask them questions about >> well, the police officer talked with somebody at the police station, or walking down the street about what their occupation is, do they work at home. they're -- they are trying to get information. that's perfectly legitimate. >> certainly, but in that hypothet >> well, then your broad

statement simply does not work. >> suppose you -- you have someone who, who has been guilty of a crime. he has -- he has the body. he has committed a murder and he has the body in the home. he certainly wants to keep that private, right? and he foolishly and mistakenly leaves the blinds open in the room where -- where the corpse is lying, and the policeman at a great distance has a telescope and he looks through the blinds and he sees the corpse. can the police go into the home? >> in that situation, the person inside the home has knowingly exposed what is inside the home to the public. >> oh -- he hasn't knowingly. he was careless. >> well, but i -- i understood under your hypothetic that he knowingly left the blinds open. >> he certainly wanted to keep it -- he wanted to keep it private. >> well, certainly, and the defendant in reilly wanted to keep the marijuana private. >> well, you could say the same thing here. they wanted to keep private the fact that they were growing the marijuana, but they -- they used a means of suppressing the heat that made it impossible to keep it private.

>> well, that >> they were careless. >> i -- i don't believe there is anything in the record to indicate that the air conditioner was blowing the smell of marijuana out from the house in a very strong manner. as a matter of fact >> there were the mothballs. >> there were mothballs there, and detective bartelt, the dog handler that was standing at the front door as well, testified without contradiction or without hesitation he didn't smell anything. so if -- if mr. garre's representation about an air conditioner basically blowing the smell of marijuana outside the house so that anybody would smell it >> what were the mothballs there for? >> the mothballs presumably were there to -- to mask the smell of an odor coming from the house. >> ok, then >> it's manifesting an expectation of privacy. >> well, that's my question. are we talking about the expectation of privacy in the marijuana or the expectation of privacy in the odor? >> the expectation of privacy on the -- in the details, what's

going on inside your house. >> well -- well, no, that can't be right, because if you're letting smoke out that -- that -- i don't know, from the burning of a body or something, you don't say, well, because he's trying to conceal that you can't rely on the smoke. >> but that's knowingly exposing what's inside the house. >> so i guess the question here is, if you appreciate the fact that the odor is coming out to the extent that you're going to put mothballs all around the that you -- you may have an expectation of privacy in the marijuana plants, but you don't have an expectation of privacy in the odor, because you're emitting it out, out into the world, and it's the odor that was detected. >> but assuming that's what the mothballs were there for, that's to keep the odor inside the house, so that the public cannot find -- cannot detect that odor, unless you go up there >> that's like saying you put the -- the drugs in a -- in a bag to protect them from observation on the outside, but you use, you know, a clear bag rather than a, you know, opaque one or something. you didn't -- you weren't very

successful. and -- when you began you said assuming that's what the mothballs were there for. that is what they were there for, isn't it? there is no other reason >> there's -- there is really no evidence in the record as to >> there's -- there is really no evidence in the record as to -- the only people who testified at the hearing on the motion to suppress were the two police officers. >> well, i think your first reason is -- is so broad, it is clearly incorrect. on to your second reason. >> yes, i was going to ask for your second, your second point. >> well, the -- when a police officer takes a narcotics detection dog up to the front door of the house, that is also a fourth amendment search because that is a physical trespass upon the constitutionally protected area of the curtilage of the home. >> you know, we've had hundreds of years of trespass cases in this country and in england. has there -- do you have a single case holding that it is a trespass for a person with a dog to walk up to the front door of a house? >> well, there are cases that go back to the -- i'm sorry, i don't have the, the citations -- but there are cases in the 1700s that established that basically a dog running on to

someone else's property is a trespass. >> that really wasn't my question, was it? >> i thought your question was if a dog comes on to private property >> if a dog on a leash is brought up to the front door of a person's house, was that a trespass at the time when the fourth amendment was adopted? >> if it was without the consent of the homeowner, yes, it was a trespass. >> what is the case that says that? >> i do not have the case. >> you don't have the case. >> you're assuming the conclusion in these things. i mean, i thought since katz the rule has been whether the homeowner has a reasonable expectation of privacy in -- which is infringed or violated or interfered with when the government acts. so it's a question of does he have that reasonable expectation. so now we're back to exactly where we were. your opponents say, no, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy >> well -- >> to protect a person with a

dog coming up to the door and going (indicating), all right? now, your response to that is what? >> my response to that is that does violate the resident's reasonable expectation of privacy. >> and then the question was, as justice alito put it, why? he says, we go back to the 17th century, as far as you want, and there is no law that says there is any kind of expectation in a homeowner that a person won't walk up to the dog -- to the door with a dog on a leash and sniff, which, as he says -- which your opponents say is what happened here. and your response to that is? >> my response to that is that any entry onto private property in the 1700's was a trespass, was the tort of trespass, unless it was with consent. >> what about, mr. blumberg, the government cited many, many pages in the record, i just took the first one, petition -- appendix to the petition, 104 and 105. the court said, the officer and

the dog were lawfully present at the defendant's front door, and we were told that that was conceded by you a number of times. >> absolutely not, justice ginsburg. what i -- what i said in the florida supreme court, i was given a hypothet about an officer coming up by himself without the dog to knock on the front door and talk to the homeowner. that said that i conceded would not be a violation of a reasonable expectation of privacy, and this court has stated as much in kentucky v. king. and then the court said to me, what's the difference? and i said the dog. and that's exactly what i'm saying here. >> ok. so that's clearly -- you do concede if the police officer walks up to the door, smells it himself, no problem there, is that right? >> if the police officer is perform -- is knocking on the door, part of a knock and talk, yes, but, if the police >> but smells it himself, so there's no problem there. so the difference is the dog. so what difference does the dog make? suppose the dog were not doing

this ten-minute bracketing that justice breyer was talking about. suppose this really were a very simple procedure. the dog comes up, takes a sniff, barks, sits down. and, you know, to make it even more, the dog is not a scary- looking dog, the dog is a cockapoo. yourst like, you know, neighbor with his cockapoo walks up to your door all the time, that's what this police officer has done. why do you win then? >> well, whether it's a cockapoo or franky, who, from all the pictures, appears to be a very cute dog, it's not what the dog looks like, it's what the dog is doing on the front porch, which is -- >> the dog does what your neighbor's dog does. >> well, no, this dog -- the neighbor's dog does not search for evidence on your front porch. that's the key distinction. >> but, mr. blumberg, i think you're, with respect, misguided to concede that if it was just the officer alone without the dog, it would be perfectly ok. >> i did not mean to concede that, and i was going to say

that. >> well, i thought you did. >> i was about to return to your >> and i would assume you would say that if the officer walks up there with no intention to knock and talk, but just walks up to the door with the intention of sniffing at the door, you would consider that to be a violation, wouldn't you? >> and that was the point i was going to make in response to justice kagan's question. >> well, our fourth amendment cases are very clear that they don't turn on the subjective intent of the particular officer. >> and i am not arguing that. i am arguing -- >> i thought you just said it depends on whether or not he's going up to the door to sniff or going up for something else. >> it depends what the officer does at the front door, not what his state of mind is. if the officer goes up to the front door and starts sniffing around the cracks and crevices >> yes, sure, if he's down on his knees, but, what if he goes up to the front door and sniffs? i mean, he's >> that's -- >> he's got to breathe. i mean, how do you tell whether it's different? i don't understand. he's going up to drop off, you know, tickets to the policeman's ball, and he smells marijuana. what is that? is that a violation or not? >> it is not because he is not

performing any type of search. >> so it depends on -- but if he's going up to sniff, it is a violation? >> not going up to sniff. if he goes up there and does sniff -- >> what if he goes to -- >> and starts searching around, looking in the windows >> he goes to deliver the tickets, and he sniffs? he doesn't intend to sniff before he goes, but he goes the deliver the tickets, and he smells the marijuana. is that a search? >> no, because he's not performing any kind of search. and this court has repeatedly held that an officer >> well, he doing exactly the same thing. two officers go up to two identical houses. one goes up with the subjective intent to sniff. the other one goes up with the subjective intent to drop off the tickets to the policeman's ball. your answer is one is a search, one is not a search. >> no, and i am not in any way, shape or form tying it to the subjective intent of the officer. >> all right. again, i think you're wrong not to accept that. i think our cases support it. i think you cannot enter the protected portion of a home, which is called the curtilage, with the intention of conducting a search, that that is not permitted. i think our cases establish that. >> i believe the language

>> and it's fine to say -- i don't think it's true that the intent of the officer is never relevant. it is relevant in that context. the reason for the officer going onto protected property, if he's going on just to knock on the door to sell tickets to the policeman's ball, that's fine. if he's going on to conduct a search, that's something else. >> the language in this court's opinion in jones is for the purpose of conducting a search. >> can odors be in in the equivalent of plain sight, plain smell? in other words, the officer goes up to drop off the policeman's ball tickets, the door is open, he sees the dead body. the officer goes up to sell the policeman's ball tickets, and he sees -- he smells the marijuana. ok in both cases, right? >> yes, mr. chief justice. >> so this depends upon how strong the odor is. >> this court's decisions establish that a police officer does not have to close his eyes when he goes up to the front door of a house to do a knock and talk. he does not have to hold his nose to prevent. anything that he naturally

observes using his ordinary senses when he is there for a lawful purpose such as a knock and talk is fine. >> if the -- let's say it's a townhouse that goes right up to the sidewalk. if the police go by with their dog intending to sniff, and the dog alerts, on the sidewalk but two feet away is the front door, that's ok, right? >> well, that would not be a trespass. that would not be a search because a trespass -- >> so it's ok? >> no, it's not ok, respectfully, because the dog would still be revealing details inside the home that the officer could not reveal using his or her ordinary senses. that's our first argument in this case. >> well, let me make sure i understand you. the policeman is walking down the sidewalk with his dog, the dog stops and alerts. that doesn't constitute sufficient probable cause to get a search warrant to go into the townhouse. there's been no entry onto the property, just a policeman walking with his dog. >> well, but i assume on your

hypothet it's a policeman walking with his narcotics detection dog up and down the street. >> sure. >> a dog that he knows is trained >> he's walking the dog. he's not out searching. he's walking the k-9 dog, and the dog alerts on a house without any trespass. you think that's still bad? >> yes. and i would submit that would basically be the same thing as a police officer walking up and down the street with a thermal imager that's turned on. >> but you do say that this is an easier case. >> this is an easier case, of course, because the police officer in this case -- and not only the facts of this case, but the question presented is going up to the front door of a home. >> i thought the relevance of technology was that the technology that we have now was not necessarily -- was not -- much of it was not available at the time when the fourth amendment was adopted, so we can't tell what the -- what people in 1791 would have thought about it. but that's not true of dogs. dogs were around. they have been around for 10,000 years. >> dogs were around, justice alito >> and they've been used -- and

they've been used to detect scents for 10,000 -- for thousands of years. certainly, they were available for that purpose in 1791, weren't they? >> but in 1791, dogs had not been trained to detect criminal activity within a house -- not -- i'm sorry -- >> but they had been trained to track people, had they not? >> yes. dogs have been tracking people >> so in 1791, if someone -- if the police were using -- or somebody was using a bloodhound to track -- someone who was suspected of a crime, and the bloodhound -- and they used the bloodhound to track the person to the front of -- to the front door of a house, would that have been regarded as a trespass? >> yes, i believe it still would have. >> and what's the case that says that? a well, the -- i do not have case that says that taking a bloodhound up to the front door of a house would be a trespass. but if you analyze it under the definition of what a trespass

is, it's an unlawful entry onto private property without consent of the homeowner. and there is no >> without implied consent. >> right. >> actual or implied consent. >> i don't believe a homeowner, back in the 1700's, impliedly consented to police coming up to the front door of his house with a bloodhound, even though everybody knew they could do that. >> well, are there cases that say that the implied consent exists only where the person is coming to the door for a purpose that the homeowner would approve, if the homeowner knew the purpose of the person coming to the door? >> the specific doctrine is implied consent by custom. and so you look to what is it customary for people to accept in terms of people coming onto their property. >> how is that different from what justice breyer i think correctly indicated, our inquiry as to whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy? in a way, that's circular

because if we say there is, then there is, if we say there isn't, then there isn't. but if we're looking at community values in general, isn't it a reasonable expectation of privacy? >> it's very similar. the two doctrines are very similar. whether you're saying it's a violation of a reasonable expectation of privacy, as justice breyer >> let me ask this. i think i know what your answer would be. suppose the policemen have little microphones on so they can talk into their radio, the microphone on their lapel. suppose the policeman goes to the homeowner and he has the microphone in his lapel on so his partner can hear the conversation, and they can -- the two of them talk about it later. they're talking to the homeowner. is that an unlawful search? >> if the homeowner chooses to engage in conversation with that officer and his conversation is overheard on the microphone -- >> it doesn't occur to him that that mike is on. >> but, again, when you talk to the police officer, that's a reasonable possibility. you don't have -- that's not a reasonable expectation of privacy, that if you talk to a police officer, that that might be going out to another police officer that's in the car down the street.

but there's no -- a homeowner does not -- >> but -- but maybe it is a reasonable expectation, maybe it isn't. i frankly think that might be harder than the dog case or that you can make a stronger case for a reasonable expectation of privacy. if the -- if the homeowner is making a lot of marijuana with -- with odors coming out, he knows that a dog or a person might smell it. >> but, again, this particular case is not -- the question presented does not hinge on whether or not a normal officer could smell it, because this officer, detective -- i'm sorry -- detective bartelt said he did not smell it. >> it does hinge on what is a reasonable expectation of privacy. >> it does. >> and that's what we're trying to find out. >> it does. >> i'll look at this later, but i'm rather surprised. my understanding of the case law was the chief justice's, and i thought what you're supposed to look at is the behavior of the individual, the police officer, who comes to the door or looks into the house, not his subjective motive.

now, as we just heard, you said, and with support here, that jones changed that, but i don't know what in jones changed that. jones was the case where the police did in fact go to a person's car and physically put something in it. that's -- something that tracked. that's behavior. >> correct. but the definition >> so what is it in jones that said what we're supposed to look at is not behavior, but the subjective intent of the officer? >> it's the language in jones that says one of the elements in determining whether or not a physical trespass constitutes a search under the fourth amendment is, is there a physical trespass, onto a constitutionally protected area, for the purpose of conducting a search. those are the three elements of the >> what is the constitutionally protected area in this case? >> in this case, the curtilage of the home. >> even though it's the sidewalk where people -- there's an implied license for people to walk up to

>> well, that was your -- justice breyer -- i mean, it may be a search. i see that. >> it's not a sidewalk here. it's the front door. >> it's not the sidewalk here, is it? it's the front part. >> no, no, it's the front door of the home here. >> but there is an implied license to walk up to the front door, right? >> only -- only to do certain things. >> there's -- there's an implied license to -- to go on to the curtilage for most people. >> yes. >> the curtilage is -- is not sacrosanct. >> to do certain things such as to try to and sell girl scout cookies, to knock -- even a police officer can go on to the curtilage, to knock on to the door -- i'm sorry -- to knock on the front door, to try and engage the person inside the home in a conversation. >> could we go back to the concession that was asked of you, what you conceded in the florida court or didn't? have you conceded that the police officer sans dog, if he had come up to the door and knocked, that that would have been permissible, that that was not a search or seizure? >> if what the police officer was doing at the front door was a knock and talk. that was the law >> did he have -- did he have a

right under the facts of this case? he had been told that in this house they were growing marijuana by a confidential informant. assume that's all that he had. would he have had a right to walk up to the door, knock on it, and start asking questions? >> without the dog. >> let's -- sans dog, yes. >> yes, yes. that's kentucky v. king, i believe. >> all right. so you are conceding that he had license to walk onto -- or walk to the door and ask questions. >> a police -- there's implied consent for a police officer to go up to the front door, knock on the door and attempt to engage the person in the house in conversation if they open the door. >> so why is that? why is that? if you took a poll of people and said do you want -- do you want police officers who suspect you of possibly engaging in criminal conduct to come to your front door and knock on the door so they can talk to you and attempt to get incriminating information out of you, would most people say, yes, i consent to that? >> in terms of consent?

again, it's implied consent by custom. and i think at this point it's customary for people to expect that police officers may come to your front door and knock on your front door to try and talk to you. you don't have to talk to them. >> i guess the bottom line is that are you taking -- it sounds to me like you're saying there's no implied consent to bring a dog on to my property. >> absolutely. absolutely. and certainly not a narcotics detection dog. >> you're -- mr. garre said differently, that there is an implied consent for your neighbor to bring the dog up for anyone else but a police officer. is that what you're saying? there's an implied consent for anyone else or there is no implied consent, period? >> i think a strong argument can be made that there is no implied consent for anyone to bring a dog up to the front door of your house, because, as you pointed out, a lot of people don't like -- don't like dogs and -- and some people are allergic to dogs. >> i thought you were talking about a dog trained to detect contraband >> yes. >> not just any old dog. >> we are, but i believe the

hypothet was just any dog. but certainly, when it's -- when it's a dog trained to detect contraband, there's no question that no one impliedly consents to that happening and there's no question, as justice breyer pointed out, that a homeowner has a reasonable expectation of privacy that tha's hapn. >> you draw a distinc between dogs that are not drug detection dogs and ordinary dogs. would you draw the same distinction between a police officer who is not expert at detecting the smell of methamphetamine and a police officer who is expert at detecting the smell of that drug? >> in terms of the right of that officer to come up to the house and knock on the front door? >> to knock on the front door, yes. >> no, there -- there wouldn't be any distinction to that. you impliedly consent and you have no reasonable expectation of privacy that any type of police officer is going to come and knock on your front door and try and talk to you. >> not a police officer. if we start -- policemen have to know how to behave. and in this area, they can

behave the same way as other people can behave, and we expect them to behave, even though their motive differs. they're always trying to find crime. that's what i thought the law was. i've been trying to figure out just what you say, but in a slightly different form. do people come up to the door with dogs? yes. do the dogs breathe? yes. do in fact policemen, like other people, come up and breathe? yes. do we expect it? yes, we expect people to come up and breathe. but do we expect them to do what happened here? and at that point, i get into the question -- what happened here? and i'd be interested in your view on that. >> and -- and just to clear up the factual, i don't believe that -- that what happened here in terms of the use of the drug detection dog took 5 to 15 minutes. it didn't take 5 to 15 minutes. it certainly took, i would say, at least 1 or 2 minutes, because what happened -- and again, this is on 96, 97 and 98

-- the officer goes from the street over the curb, up to the front door of the house, with the dog basically dragging him up to the front door of the house. they go up this walkway -- and a picture of the home is -- is in the appendix to the brief -- and then the dog crosses the -- into the alcove, the area right in front of the house. and once he gets in that area, the dog starts violently bracketing back and forth, pulling on the leash. the dog handler testified that the other officer had to stay back, because it was so violent that people could get knocked down by what's happening. and for a period of time the dog goes back and forth, back and forth, and then at some point goes to the crack on the bottom of the front door, sniffs that, and then the process finally stops, he sits down. so that's factually what happened. >> mr. blumberg, the florida appellate court, yes, the court of appeals, did say that that

the officer and the dog were lawfully present. but you say you didn't make that concession. >> well, that's -- i did not make that concession and -- no, i certainly did not concede that, but the court found that. and that's the point i wanted to make. the courts, both courts in florida, squarely addressed that issue, justice ginsburg. there is a whole section in the opinion in the third district court of appeals saying the officer and the dog were lawfully present. they didn't -- that section doesn't go, defense counsel concedes that issue. that -- that issue -- that part of the opinion goes -- we find that the officer and the dog were lawfully present. so it's squarely before this court. >> well, don't we have to accept that? don't we have to accept that as a statement of florida law? >> i'm sorry. i didn't hear the beginning of your >> do we not have to accept that as a statement of florida law? >> no. >> no? >> the issue is whether or not that's a violation of the fourth amendment. and -- and just because the third district court of appeal found -- that's -- that's what's before the court today. that's why the issue is squarely

before the court. the third district court of appeal decided the officer had the right to go up and be there on the front porch with the dog. the florida supreme court disagreed. there is a passage in the decision of the florida supreme court that says an officer going up to the door -- can go up to the door and do a knock and talk, but when the officer goes up with a narcotics detection dog, that is a qualitatively different matter. so that issue is -- >> maybe this is the same question justice alito asked earlier, but people have different senses of smell. so what if there is some person who has, you know, the best sense of smell in the department, and they say, well, let's use him to go do the knock and talks when we suspect drugs, that way, he may discover the odor of marijuana when other people wouldn't. is it -- is it -- is it wrong for them to select the person with the best sense of smell to do that? >> i think that would lead more to a determination that there was a trespass because they selected the officer who had the best sense of smell to go up to that door. so they weren't really going up

there to do a knock >> to do a knock and talk. you said knock and talks are ok. >> well, but there's -- knock and talks are ok, but, under your hypothet, it appears that the knock and talk was -- was not really what the officer was going up there for. they picked the officer with the best sense of >> you're on a really slippery slope with that answer. there's dual motives in everything police officers do. >> right. >> they knock to hope the person comes to the door and that they can see something from the door. they knock -- they always have a dual motive. so you're suggesting what? >> no. >> in terms of our rule >> i don't >> that if they select somebody with a sense of smell because they have gotten a tip of drugs in a house, that we give up, in that situation, the assumption that they went to investigate? >> no. but the rule i'm asking this court to adopt does not rely on the subjective intent of the police officer. the rule i'm asking this court to adopt >> he knocks, and he says to the neighbor, who are you? i've gotten a report, and i'm

smelling drugs, so i know you have drugs in there. >> that -- that would be fine. that would be -- that would be plain smell in that. but if >> but if he smells first and asks the question second, that's not ok? >> no, no. what's not ok is if he goes up there to perform a search, or if he conducts a search -- and, again, back to the facts of this case, when a police officer goes up to the front door with a narcotics detection dog, there is no question what that officer is doing. that officer is performing a search. and, therefore, if you go to jones, the officer and the dog have entered -- have physically trespassed, because there is no consent to do that, onto a constitutionally protected area, the curtilage of the home, and performed a search. if you just -- you follow the test set forth in jones and apply it to what happened here and the question presented here, it is a trespass. >> i thought the reason -- i thought the rationale in jones, what jones added, was that it is a search if it was a trespass. >> yes.

thend so i come back to very first question i asked you, do you have any authority for the proposition that this would be a trespass? any case that says this is -- any trespass case in the last five hundred years in any english-speaking country? >> i don't believe any court has faced this issue as to whether or not taking a police dog up to the front door of a house is a trespass under the common law. >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you. >> mr. garre, you have three minutes remaining. >> thank you, your honor. first, with the question of how long they were at the scene, the record says that they were at the scene for five to ten minutes. that's -- that includes in the car, walking up to the door, which my friend conceded was a minute or two, and, then back in the car and leaving. with respect to the bracketing, bracketing just means that the dog is getting excited, moving his head around. this is a passive alert dog. they get a little bit excited and then sit down. it's no different than what a neighbor's dog would do when they get to the front door. second, with respect to state law, we do think it's important. and florida has a decision,

state v. -- >> i thought what the dog does, according to the police officer's testimony, is he gave him a long leash so the dog would lead him to the drugs. and what the dog did, i thought, according to what i read, was go past the motorcycle to make sure -- i mean, the officer said this -- you don't know if the drugs are in the motorcycle, you don't know if they're in the garage, you don't know where they might be. so the dog is permitted to roam around until he catches the scent. is that accurate? >> yes. they're walking up the common path, and you can see it from the picture at the -- appended to the brief, and then up to the front door. it's near the front door where he alerted by sitting down. >> but the point is that he's sniffing all the way around to see >> he's sniffing, he's breathing. that's right. >> yes. >> with respect to state law, state v. morsman, 394 so.2d 408 at 409, this was a case that came up during oral argument in the supreme court. it says that, under florida law, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a

porch, taking into account that visitors and salesmen can come up to the front door. and i think that that's pertinent here. don'te kennedy, if you like the contraband rationale, then i hope you would consider the knowingly exposed to the public rationale. here, the record does show that they -- drug houses do vent the stuff outside. it's page a-48 of the joint appendix. that's in the warrant, where they talk about what the air conditioning unit does to the scent of marijuana in the house. we know that they knew about that because officer bartelt came across the moth balls -- that's on page 100 of the joint appendix -- outside of the house. the mothballs were outside of the house, which means >> but i think, mr. garre, that the >> which means that they knew that the odors were outside the house. >> i think, mr. garre, that you have to concede that this is a case about police use -- call it a technology, call it whatever you want to call it -- of something that enhances what normal people can sense. and then the question becomes, do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in, basically, people just having their normal senses, rather

than some technique or method or technology that enhances those senses? orthat your implied consent expectations about your neighbor might differ fundamentally, you know, if the neighbor comes and knocks on your door, or if the neighbor brings his magnifying glass and his microscope and everything else and starts testing everything around it. you might say, no, that's -- i'm -- i'm not there for that. >> well, and i think that gets back to our point that this is a dog that's been used by humans for centuries by scent. and in that respect, it's quite different than the helicopter that was used for aerial surveillance in florida v. reilly. >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you, your honor. >> counsel. the case is submitted. and about half an hour the

president will speak about investments and infrastructure. we just saw his motorcade drives by a couple of minutes ago. whenll have live coverage it gets underway here on c-span. while we wait, a discussion on abortion law from this morning's washington journal. and local government issues for bloomberg news. at line of a story recently wrote, north carolina governor signs at the earliest u.s. abortion limit. what did the governor of north dakota assigned? guest: he signed a bill and what is called a heartbeat and. -- ban. this is effectively out and as early as six weeks into a presidency, as soon as the fetus's heart can be detected. it is the narrowest window of any band that we have in states

right now -- ban that we have in states right now. this goes even earlier than arkansas. aspects relating to the kind of fetuses that can be aborted. what are those? guest: there are four abortion- related pieces of legislation that got past north dakota. we've got a heart beat bill, the six week ban -- we have been admitting privilege bill. that is maybe more threatening to the one clinic that north dakota still has in terms of shutting it down. the third one we have is a ban on abortions sought for sex selection or genetic abnormalities like down syndrome. and we have a fourth, which will go to the voters, it will personhoodcalled a resolution, which would

essentially to endow a fertilized egg with all the rights and privileges of living human beings. those measures it all law abortion completely. host: in bloomberg business week, you look at what happens to a woman in north dakota that wants an abortion. what happens to a woman that wants an abortion? does she have other options? is it legal for to go outside the state? guest: is important to note that these lots will north dakota have not taken effect yet. there will not take effect until august 1. we definitely think there'll be plenty of legal challenges. these laws off and gets paid in court. do not take effect until years down the line. -- they do not take effect until years down the line. north dakota and women still have that one clinic. the state is big.

the one clinic is in fargo. we already see north dakota women leaving the state if they live and other parts of it to get an abortion. you have states like wyoming and south dakota and even canada that women can drive to. absolutely, people can go out of state to get the abortion. there are different laws depending on states. south dakota would require you to take two trips. it really comes down to personal economics, whether a woman has a car and can afford to take the time off from work and to get child care to go to seek that abortion oscar. localjoining us for a perspective as dave thompson. he's the director of prairie public radio in north dakota. good morning. how has this law been received on the ground? guest: it is definitely pulverizing. we have people who are saying, good for north dakota.

a lot of people are saying, where are we going as a state? it is evenly divided from the calls and e-mails i have talked to. host: how did this get through the legislature? guest: the governor stayed out of it until the end. it was through the efforts of the pro-life legislators, the people who are anti-abortion who pushed this legislation through. as you see, there have been a number of bills enacted, some that might be even contradictory. however, they were basically saying to everybody who would listen that it is time to challenge roe v. wade. there were passionate debates on the house and senate floors. they did not pass by that much. if the governor decided to veto the bill, they would not have overridden the veto. the governor decided to go along and say okay, let's be the state that will challenge roe v date -- roe v wade.

host: we're talking to the news director at the prairie public radio in north dakota. our other guest esme deprez we might see legal challenges to this. what are the expectations, david? guest: the expectations are we will see legal challenges when the bells have been signed, everything settles down. they will now be lax august 1. i know of two efforts that are being considered right now to take them to court somehow. either in state courts for a stay of the law or federal court for rick -- for a writ. there is another avenue, referring the loss. that is being talked about quite openly. if you get a referral gulling, wants to get the language approved that could be on the ballot, then you could get

enough signatures to stay the bill from going into effect. that effort is also being talked about. host: dave thompson, tell us about your governor, details about how this affects him politically in your state record -- your state. guest: my intel is telling me, governor, this might weaken him of it. he may have packed too far to the right. there are people in the republican caucus in the legislature who are questioning what he has done. if i could take a moment and say that they're telling me -- there was a constitutional amendment that will go on the ballot in 2014 that is kind of a personhood amendment that says all life should be protected, from birth until death, from conception until death -- the governor could have done that, we will be to the other bells, but see what

happens in 2014 when the amendment is voted on in 2014. he did not do that. he went further. there are republicans questioning whether or not he was talking too far to the right. host: dave thompson, thank you for talking to us early this morning. esme deprez, let's follow up on a person could bill, something mr. thompson mentioned. what is that? guest: personhood measures seek to endow fertilized eggs with all the rights and privileges of living human being. what this does is that it effectively equates abortion with murder and thereby outlaw's it in that way. we have seen this play out in mississippi. voters already weighed in on this issue. two years ago, they rejected a personhood amendment. in colorado, this has also been rejected. if north dakota voters to approve of personhood measure, this would be the first date to

have such a thing. it is important to note that personhood measures are not pushed typically by the mainstream anti-abortion groups. this is really something new, something we are seeing, this is not necessarily constitutional. mainstream anti-abortion movements do not see this as a good way to tackle the heart of roe v wade and to get abortions no longer possible in this country. dakota. you mentioned arkansas. what are other states that are seeing more conservative abortion measures passed and going into law? guest: we have seen a ton of state activity in recent breeze -- recent years. record numbers of loss. -- laws. 20 weak bands are very popular.

20-week bans are popular. arizona passed a ban recently, which bans abortion at 20 weeks, which is a little bit earlier than the standard of the 20-24 week sat in roe v wade. like north dakota, we have other states passing laws that require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. depending on where you live, that can be hard to obtain. hospitals do not want to get into the middle of that, that sticky political fight, deciding whether abortion is obtainable in the state. mississippi had a law passed last year -- it is really getting challenged in court -- it is another state where there is just one abortion clinic left. if that clinic cannot get those admitting privileges, then they may have to shut down. another very popular law we have seen is to require abortions be provided in ambulatory surgical centers.

those have certain holly requirements and requirements about sinks and closets. michigan passed along last year it like that. that is going to be very expensive for providers to conform to and therefore may put them out of business. host: we're talking about states' abortion laws. mark is our first caller, st. paul, minnesota. caller: i notice republicans are doing the double standard about bigger government, but they want to take women's rights about that control of their body. ,t is getting frustrating seeing republicans wanting to change things that do not need to get changed.

host: how are republicans looking at the issue of abortion? how did it come up in the campaign, and what are the platform beliefs? it is hard to enact these laws at the federal level. we are not by to see a lot of action. obama -- >> we will now go to miami where the president will talk about jobs and the economy. this is live coverage on c-span. "hail to the chief" plays] >> hello, miami.

it is good to be back. waiting for spring. i just realized i had to come down to miami. it is wonderful to be here. we have some outstanding representatives in congress from this area. joe garcia is in the house. wilson is in the house. and we have debbie wasserman schultz. i want to thank the mayor, and it is good to see you. i want to thank the gentleman of gave me an amazing tour the port miami tunnel. what are you yelling about? sweetie! ok, well, hello. [laughter]

politician to be a because i can hear her without a mike. now, before we get started, i have got to get into a sticky subject. i know you guys are not happy with my chicago bulls. [boos] but i want you to note that the heat are going to be just fine, they are going to be ok. the are playing basketball right way. the hurricanes had a great season. they deserve a big round of applause. [applause] andght you have florida florida gulf coast going at it. one of them will go to the elite 8, so florida is the center of basketball right now. i am not here to talk about

hoops. i am here to talk about one of the plans i put forward in my state of the union address, to put people back to work, rebuilding america. i have come to port miami today because there are few more important things we can do to create jobs right now and strengthen our economy over a --ng haul we lost our picture from port miami, and it appears we have got it back now, so we would go back for president, obama's remarks. our trueas got to be north, pass to guide our efforts every day, and we should be

asking ourselves three questions every single day -- number one, how do we make america a magnet for good jobs? how to equip our workers with the skills they need to do the jobs? number three, how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living? when it comes to good jobs, no workers were hammered harder by the recession than the construction workers. the unemployment rate has been cut nearly in half over the past years because the housing market is starting to bounce back. construction still has the highest unemployment rate of any industry. breaking ground on more projects like this tunnel that i just saw means war could construction jobs that cannot be outsourced, they have to be done right here in america, and end up giving people could pay and opportunities to raise their families.

[applause] projects like this create a lot of good jobs, not to. you ask any ceo where they would like to hire their workers perched are you gone to set up shop in a country that has raggedy roads, or are you going to seek out high-speed rail, internet and high-techs schools? new state-of-the-art power grids, new bridges, new tunnels, newport's that help you ship products to the rest of the world as fast as possible? that is what people are looking for, that is what ceo's are looking for. our will say if we upgrade own infrastructure, we will bring even more. what are we waiting for? there is work to be done, there are workers who are ready to do it. let's prove to the world there

is no better place to do business than right here in the united states of america, and let's get started rebuilding america. [applause] over the last four years we have done some good work. construction crews have built or improved more than 350,000 miles of roads. that is enough to circle the globe 14 times. we have upgraded more than 6,000 miles of rail, a enough to go coast to coast and back. we have repaired or replaced more than 20,000 bridges. we have helped get tens of thousands of construction workers back on the job. because of these efforts, when the american society of engineers put out their 2013 report card on our national and for structure, they gave it the best overall grade in 12 years. that is the good news. the bad news is we went from a d to a d +.

we still have all kinds of deferred maintenance. we still have too many ports that are not equipped for today's worldcom are separate we have too many rail lines that are too slow and clogged up, too many roads that are in disrepair, too many bridges. we do not have to accept that for america. we can build better. any time of tight budgets, we got to do it in a way to make sure that dollars are spent wisely. outstanding folks have been doing in miami is an example of how my plan would work. the port of miami is a busy place. hundreds of cargo containers pass through every day. nearly one in five cruise ship passengers in north america sets sail from the sport.

all that commerce helps support a lot of jobs, not just in miami-dade, but throughout the region. it treats some congestion. right now 16,000 cars and trucks travel to and from the port of miami every day, and they are stopped going through downtown, and it had a chance, are bad for business, whether a manufacturer in atlanta, try to get your goods overseas. that ingestion wastes time and money. some smart folks decided we could solve this problem by digging under the bay, linking the port directly to the localy, and state and governments got together to find the port of miami tunnel. everybody had a skin in the game. they did something, partnered with a group of private-sector companies to finance design and its section of the project. they made it clear that the payments to these companies

would be linked to their performance, so if there were overruns, the private companies would have to keep -- eat those costs. because of those efforts, workers are on the jobs begin this tunnel, doing a great job, getting good pay, boosting the economy, strengthening it for the long run. the port is in better shape which means they are going to be able to get all the containers coming in from all round the world, matched up with improvements that are being done with the panama canal, which to it means we will not be losing jobs to other countries. we cannot -- we can do this all across the country. on aday i am expanding proposal i made in the state of the union. i'm calling it a partnership to rebuild america. the partnership with the private sector to create jobs, upgrading what our businesses need most -- water ports, water

pipelines, modern schools were the of our children. my plan does three things. first we will set up an independent fund that will attract private investment build a project like this to make sure that company's share in the risks and returns. we will pick project based on how they will do for the economy, and we will better finance projects that involve more than one mode of transportation or town or state. process will make the more efficient. it will help us make break ground on projects that cities and states need most and they can do it faster and better. second, we will find more projects at less cost by establishing and new ifill structure mission called american fast forward bob trick it will give officials were at par to attract private

investment for public projects. number three, we will strengthen a program that has helped governors and mayors leverage money washington has put into it, and that means we will help workers get on the job quicker, repaving taxpayers their money faster, and that is the bridge using the port of miami tunnel to get under the ground pit that is the partnership to rebuild america. that is how we will create jobs and not doing the work that america needs done. that is how we will encourage businesses to grow businesses and hire workers. this should not be partisan idea. i do -- i know washington people like to argue. it gets them on tv. the fact is you have got the chamber of commerce and the afl- cio agreeing to better infrastructure knowing it will

help businesses and workers, so if you have the chamber and the unions agree yean, then the politicians should agree, too. building better roads and that isand schools -- not a partisan idea, and that is where you can get mayors and governors from both parties to find common ground. i know the members of, the press are happy to welcome product because i have seen them at the ribbon-cuttings. how we do not want to do it, and then they are writing me letters saying we need this port. cut somebody else's port out. that is what they will say to cut somebody else's road, -- no, are in this together, so if you think it is good in it for your district, it is good for other districts, too. we cannot afford washington

politics to stand in the way america's progress. i have put forward ideas to get the private sector involved to protect taxpayer dollars, but congress has to fund these projects the three members of congress who are here believe in this, they support it. put people back to work and it will grow our economy. my main message is let's get this done. let's rebuild this country we love. let's make sure we're staying on the cutting edge, that we always have the best reports, the best airports, the best rail lines, let's make sure we have the best roads, the best schools. we will push on this issue each day and make sure we get a middle-class going again. we will fix our economy, which are going to fix our immigration system. where are going to make sure our young people get a good education. we will prevent them from being

victims of gun violence. we will make sure everybody has a fair shot at is doing their fair share so that when we pass on this country to the next generation and the generation after that, we will be able to say that here in the united states of america, it does not matter what you look like a where you come from, if you work hard, you can make it. thank you. god bless you. god bless the united states of america. [applause] and stripes forever" plays]

♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪

washington post" plays] ♪